


Survival of the Fittest

by The-Immortal-Moon (LunaKat)



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Jumanji (1995)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Jumanji Fusion, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cross-Generational Friendship, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-01-16 00:44:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 36,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18510460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunaKat/pseuds/The-Immortal-Moon
Summary: While mourning the recent deaths of their parents, the Elric brothers unearth a mystical boardgame that drags them into a treacherous string of events involving a jungle-man who supposedly died sixteen years ago, a jumpy woman with an inexplicable talent with guns, and various jungle-related dangers that overall threaten to kill them.For the record, this was all Ed's idea.(OR: A shameless parody of the 1995 Jumanji movie with FMA, because I am legitimately surprised no one has thought of this yet.)





	1. Prologue: Drumbeats

_~1968_

It seemed like a good idea, in the beginning.

Go to the woods late at night and dig a hole so deep that no one would ever find it again. Lock it in a chest, throw away the key. Bury it in the middle of nowhere. It seemed exactly the sort of thing you would do if you ever had to rid yourself of a demonic entity.

In practice, though, it’s a downright _terrible_ idea.

All around them, the darkness seems  _alive_. There’s a breathing in the shadows, a whisper in the bushes and a restlessness in the trees. No wind to stirs the branches into movement, yet all around they sway and bend to some invisible force. Fletcher Tringham smothers a whimper as he turns away, trying to ignore the sensation on the back of his neck that feels too much like a hungry predator pinning its voracious gaze upon him.

“Keep digging,” Russell orders and throws aside another clot of dark earth.

Loam and soil mix earthily with the atmosphere of an otherwise idyllic autumn night, the light from the bloated harvest moon tinged faintly yellow as it washes over the clearing. There are no clouds in the sky, the stars winking coquettishly from their fixed position in the black velvet heavens, as though they have a million secrets at their disposal but no inclination to share. All around, the susurrus of dried leaves acts as a melody, a lullaby painted in the dullness of dry, crackling brown, which would reveal itself as blazing orange-red in the reassuring light of sunshine. But there is no sunshine now, only the pressing nocturnal murk. Only the black earth they are striking into with each thrust of the rusty shovels in their hands.

It’s absurdly warm for an autumn night in this region, but they are both shivering.

Brass chains glimmer in the low light from where they enshroud an antique leather trunk. Whenever Fletcher dares to glance over his shoulder at it, he swears the padlock stares at him like an unblinking eye, taunting, teasing, demanding.

For a while, there is only the rustling silence, the harshness of their own labored breathing, the living stillness.

Then—

Drumbeats.

The sound sends a jolt of primal fear through Fletcher and he shrieks, dropping his shovel and torn between running and just collapsing to his knees with a sob. Almost immediately, Russell is there, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and reassuring him that there’s no way it can get them, it’s locked up—but Fletcher does not miss the quiver in his older brother’s voice.

The drums reach a rolling crescendo. It sounds like a stampede. It sounds the way a nightmare might when it springs to life and pounds against the walls of your mind, screaming for its freedom.

“Fuck it,” Russell snarls, and throws aside his shovel. Fletcher marvels at his brother’s courage as he takes the trunk and bodily shoves it into the hole they’ve been digging.

It’s not deep enough. The trunk sinks in fully, but you can still see the lip of the chains over the edge, see the metallic glint in the moonlight. And the drumming doesn’t stop, doesn’t cease, doesn’t falter. If anything, it just sounds angrier. Blood boiling and bursting at the seams of its own madness, reveling in the prospect of dragging another down with it.

Fletcher almost jumps when a hand snags his, but it’s just Russell, green eyes wild against the shadows. “C’mon. Let’s go.”

“But,” Fletcher protests as Russell drags him away, leaving behind not only the exposed chest but also their shovels. “S-Someone else’ll find it—”

“Then it’s  _their_  problem!” Russell snarls, and they both run as far from the clearing as they can.

It is a long time before the drums fall silent.

* * *

_~2003_

The woods are the best kind of friend. Beautiful in their mystery, intimate but distant, loyal without making promises, and a sworn secret-keeper.

When she was young, Riza Hawkeye built a fort out in the woods. She brought together some rotting flaps of wood that must have fallen off from the shed, a tarp that they never use to throw over it for a waterproof roof, a few of her personal belongings—stuffed animals, crayons, a storybook or two—and made a home out of it. More home to her than the emptiness of her house, where her father disappeared for hours on end into the study and left her to her own devices in hallways that were far too large for just one person, much less a young child. So instead she crafted an enclosed space from the things that no one wanted (things like her, abandoned and forgotten), and turned it into something that is hers and hers only.

After a while, though, she outgrew the fort from the simple fact that small things don’t stay small forever. She grew into her loneliness, into the empty halls, into the dilapidating cottage that was probably beautiful once but had become an eyesore now that one half of its heart had passed and the other had withered into a ghost. She grew into a pellet gun she purchased with the allowance she scrapped up for months on end, and soon her little fort was no longer needed. She grew into longer strides that took her passed the outer rim of the clearing where the falling-apart once-cottage sat, past the edge where she dared not to surpass in her youth. She passed the fort and forged ahead, and grew into the woods instead.

Unlike the vastness of the cottage, there is life in the woods and their wide endlessness. The air does not hang still and heavy, suspended in the musty memories of someone she will never recollect. Instead, the woods have whispers, a voice, one that lulls her ever-deeper like a siren song.

Sometimes, it will fall quiet. Come winter, when the animals abandon the waking world for hibernation and a season-long slumber, when the leaves abandon the branches to a spidery existence that scratches at her jeans. Then, she will take her pellet gun and fill the silence instead with the sound of gunshots, with bark that splinters beneath the impact of plastic projectiles.

Here, she can be content.

It is not winter when she wanders down the well-trodden path, her hiking boots sinking into the soft earth and the pellet gun cradled over her shoulder. Instead, the golden warmth of summer rains down in a shining shower, greets her with dappled light-shadow kisses on her cheeks and whispers that caress her ears. Ten-year-old Riza Hawkeye comes on a whim, on a sudden impulse to be by herself without feeling the emptiness hover heavy over her shoulders. She comes to immerse herself in the jump of the forest’s pulse beneath her fingertips.

She comes and does not expect to hear the drums in the distance.

Ten-year-old Riza Hawkeye did not seek the drums, and if she knew better, she would leave them where they be, run straight out of the forest, and never give a thought of returning.

But ten-year-old Riza Hawkeye does not know better. So she does not run—she follows.

* * *

Come August, Roy Mustang will see his fourteenth year.

Fourteen is not any milestone marked by Amestrian tradition, not acknowledged to be anything more than it is, just another number to tick off on a lifetime filled with them. Just another checkpoint. Just a stall at the starting point in the looping racetrack of an annual existence, an acknowledgement of another cycle accomplished before being expected to return to driving full-tilt to reach your fifteenth.

But few realize what it means, to reach the age of fourteen. If thirteen is the year that one becomes a teenager, then fourteen is the accomplishment of having survived a whole year of adolescence. It is one tally mark of six, if one subscribes to the theory that the “teen” years begin at thirteen and end at nineteen, and adulthood is reached after one approaches the hedging of twenty. But fourteen is a stepping stone, a step in the right direction. It is a mark on the wall of the prison that is the adolescent body, as the mind waits within the hormone-plagued bars of puberty, counting down the days until it can emerge from its chrysalis and leave behind these awkward, embarrassing, and bewilderingly tumultuous years.

Adolescence is not a life sentence, and turning fourteen is the same as saying one year has been served already. One down, five to go. If you made it this far, you can make it the rest of the way. Yes, turning fourteen is an accomplishment, and to reach it is proof that you can  _get through this_.

It is a month before that one year of survival mark is reached, and Roy spends the beginning of June crouched at the top of the stairwell listening to his aunt scream.

For months now, a man has been coming to the bar—at night, and expecting to participate in the more illicit activities it has to offer. Mainly the services provided by Roy’s adoptive sisters, the girls who will dance to entertain while glittering all over and wearing cloth that hugs tight at their nubile bodies. Who will, if the price is right, deign to strip that cloth away, to engage in something that Roy, based upon what the teachers in health class say, is a vital process for procreation.

The man who has been coming does not want children, though, as has been the case with many customers who seek the same gratification. But this man, this particular slave to his biological urges and the addition of a particular sense of self-entitlement, has a wedding ring gleaming around his finger. As such, the Madam had been reluctant to allow him through the back door, but his money was good and he tipped well and the girls did not have any reservations regarding his courtesy towards them. So the transaction took place.

Well, the wife as it turns out was not stupid, and she hired a PI to track her husband through his day. Come nightfall he drifted into the bar, same as he always did, but this time with the watchful lens of a camera taking shutter-blink-snapshots of his every action.

Here lays the problem—the backdoor and all the things that go on behind it are not licensed. Not really. From what Roy understands, the practice emerged from a time in which the bar, the Twisted Midnight, was hitting hard times, and it became a matter of picking up the slack or the establishment would go under. Madam Christmas, not the one who implemented the practice and not then the proprietor, had attempted to abolish the practice once she took over, but that would have left many of her girls unemployed. Not to mention that there were many in town who would be more than willing to take over the financial aspects of looking after the girls, but in return would take their dignity and decency and treat them as more things than people.

So, for the sake of the girls, it remained open, though it became more about stripping and erotic dancing than the intimacy of sex. Even then, though, it was not approved, for the Madam had tried to make it official and promptly gotten laughed at in the face. As such, secrecy was of the essence.

Now, secrecy has been lost.

Nerves trickle their way down Roy’s spine as the argument continues to blare. Whoever first built the club had designed it to be the ground floor of a living space, where just up a flight of stairs you would find a comfortable little den and a kitchen and a few guest rooms. Another flight of stairs would lead to more bedrooms, a study, a few bathrooms, even an attic, etcetera. All the things needed for people to live in comfortably, though he’s not quite sure why. There’s a door that locks the staircase away from outside intrusion—but that door is open now, and the shouting drifts up without restraint.

There are a few flashes, a few glimpses at the visual aspect, but most of what Roy gleans is from the cacophony being exchanged between the two women. He catches snarls of “blackmail” and “extortion” by the Madam, while the wife hisses something threatening about “illegal prostitution” and “taking this to the police”.

What really catches him, though, is the snippet he hears about “calling child services”.

A primal fear blooms in his stomach, and he grips the banister tightly to keep from bolting. Roy had only spent a few weeks in the foster care system before authorities found the Madam, before they reluctantly transferred him to her clumsy care. But he was young, and the foster home he was in was not one to be spoken well of—the woman was shrill, the man hoarded bottles, and there were children far older than him with empty, burnt-out eyes like they had resigned themselves to misery.

When he was informed that he would be leaving that house, he wept. Seven-years-old and alone and scared and so, so glad he would never have to go back.

Fourteen is a milestone of survival, of blundering your way through this dizzying jungle of adolescent and finding a marker that says “this many miles to safety”. It is gripping the machete even more tightly in your hands, breathing deeply into the muggy-humid air, then steeling yourself for however many miles you have left.

But when the machete is your family, and some stranger is threatening to yank the only tool of survival in your arsenal out of your hands before abandoning you to the wilderness—then what?

* * *

Once the woman is gone, the Madame cups his chin and assures him that everything is fine. She’s all bluster, that lady. Just insecure about her marriage, so she takes it out on others. But don’t worry, she won’t  _actually_  do anything.

“How do you  _know_?” Roy asks, and he doesn’t feel almost-fourteen. He feels seven and scared and once again trapped in that purgatory of a stranger’s house after his parents died.

“I just do,” the Madame says. She ruffles his hair before he can offer any protests and tells him to hurry, they have a doctor’s appointment they need to get to.

* * *

Roy heavily suspects that, while he was at the doctor’s, the Madame called up every one of her employees and gave them a script of what to say whenever he expresses concern. His sisters all offer hollow platitudes as they flutter around in preparation for another night of hard work, of scraping by, of earning their livings in the only way they know how. None of the servers will talk to him either, brushing aside his questions if they even bother to acknowledge them, which they usually don’t. Even the cooks in the back don’t look up from their stoves when Roy stomps into the kitchen demanding  _someone_  tell him  _something_  about  _what’s going on_.

Frustrated at all turns, Roy ends up going to the only reliable source he knows.

“Uh, gee, Roy,” Maes Hughes begins nervously when Roy demands to know what the Madame has told him regarding the maybe-blackmail-attempt. His eyes flicker over to the bar, where he should be organizing the various liquors and cocktail ingredients in preparation for when the bar is at maximum capacity. It’s a Friday, too, which means it will be in full swing by tonight. “I should really—”

“Tell me, or I’ll tell my aunt you don’t actually have a bartender’s license,” Roy snaps.

Hughes stills, engaged in a silent debate. A handful of years older than Roy, and already graduated from high school, Hughes is saving up enough money to one day attend the police academy and become a hardboiled crimefighting cop. It’s a noble ambition, one that should be achieved through equally noble means, and would be if not for the mayor, a trusted public figure with as much hypocrisy slaked through his name as false smiles on his face on every re-election sign on every front lawn, somehow brainwashing businesses that he’s untrustworthy. All because Hughes has an eye on his daughter, the lovely Gracia Novak, who Mayor Novak is so fiercely protective of it borders on tyrannical. In fact, a major root in Hughes’s ambition is to whisk Gracia away somewhere lovely and romantic, where they can spend their days in wedded bliss.

But that can’t be achieved without money, and while Roy doesn’t know the whole story, he knows that Hughes can’t expect any financial support from his own folks. With most of the businesses in town unwilling to hire Hughes, and no college education to bolster his resume, he was finally left with no choice but to get down on his hands and his knees before Madam Christmas and beg for a living. Though she looked unfazed throughout the entirety of Hughes spilling his tale of woe to her, the story must have struck a hidden soft-spot in her and she said she had a bartending position open, if he had a license. Gleefully, Hughes replied that he did.

It wasn’t until watching the older boy fumble gracelessly though the more complicated cocktails that Roy figured out what a masterful liar he was. Perhaps out of pity, and perhaps because Hughes was... nice enough, albeit a little annoying, Roy mentored him in the tricks he picked up from seven years’ worth of observing other bartenders and a few books checked out from the library on the subject and consulted an online forum for tips. With only a few weeks of practice—Hughes is a quick learner—Roy had helped the older boy pass for a competent and highly-trained bartender.

Gracia soon managed to escape her parents’ clutches and was currently working at a flower shop in the next town over, also saving her money, and the two are keeping in touch regularly as they save up for the day when they would escape this town. Something Roy often hears about in great detail, when Hughes is feeling particularly lonely and needs someone to run wild fantasies by. Most friendships didn’t have such strange foundations, nor were they formed between two people with such a large age-gap—almost six years, now—but it was solid enough. And hell, sometimes Roy admitted that he  _liked_  having Hughes around.

“That’s low, Roy,” Hughes says after a minute.

Roy knows. Dammit, he  _knows_. But he’s _desperate_.

Finally, Hughes sighs. “Okay, just—let me take stock, first.”

After Hughes finishes taking stock, by which Roy is practically vibrating in his skin, the older boy turns to him. “Look,” he begins, not unkindly. “I’m not a lawyer, I don’t know about this stuff. But I’m pretty sure there’s a law or something against blackmail. Or taking pictures on private property without consent. Case closed.”

“She could still call child services,” Roy says, unconvinced. Even without the photos, you can still report things. Roy knows—he looked it up online.

“ _Anyone_  can do that. That doesn’t mean they’ll investigate.”

“What if she  _gets_  them to investigate?”

“Roy—”

“What if she gets others to testify?” Roy asks, and he feels the panic starting to swell in his gut, rising like the crest of a wave getting ready to slam headlong into the shore. “What if—what if she manages to convince the _mayor_  to get involved?”

That makes Hughes still, considering. Not the good kind of considering, though.

Then, “How would she get the _mayor_ involved?”

“ _I don’t know_!” Roy bursts out because he’s scared and this is all just—spiralling so far out of reach that he wonders if it always was, if he was ever for a moment in control of his own existence or if he was just deluding himself. “Maybe she’ll—use  _you working here_  as leverage or some shit! I don’t...”

At this point, Hughes has turned back to the cabinets, but he pauses at Roy’s words, one arm stretched out in reach of a bottle on the top shelf.

Roy has to grip the counter because if he doesn’t, he feels like he’s going to get swept away. “Just—say she  _does_  get child services down here,  _somehow_. Would they... Would Aunt Chris...?”

Would she be charged with some sort of neglect or abuse, of which she is clearly not guilty, just because they don’t know the whole story. Would they, without a second thought, rip him out of the closest thing he’s had to home since he lost his parent all with the justification of “it’s what’s best”.

The fact that Hughes doesn’t answer immediately, doesn’t even move from his spot, speaks volumes.

By the time Maes Hughes sighs and adjusts his glasses and turns around, Roy has already bolted up the stairs. He then locks himself in his room, curls up in a corner, and trembles in the prison of deafening silence.

* * *

It’s Friday, and Fridays are always the loudest.

Whoever designed the bar was idiot, because they put a living space with beds over a place that would grow rowdy and cacophonous on the weekends. For years, Roy has lost precious sleep to drunken shenanigans, to the point where the Madam began investing in medication to help him regain a few hours’ worth of slumber.

Luckily, a stopgap solution was found after Roy began tutoring a girl a few years younger than him in math—Riza Hawkeye lives in a big house on the edge of town, one with far too much space for the joint existence of her and her father, and there is a loneliness about her that makes hard lines out of her shoulders. The first time Roy stayed over, it was because they were up late running through algebra and a storm fell over the world in a curtain of rain and thunder, thus forcing him to remain indoors. Surprisingly, her father didn’t seem all that bothered by it, more annoyed by the storm and the subsequent leaky roof than by Roy’s presence. To this day, Roy still wonders if Berthold even realized Roy was there.

It became something of a pattern on Fridays, when Roy would stay late to escape the noise and Riza would surreptitiously make up the guest room for him to stay in. This precedent slowly bled over to Saturdays, which were equally as loud, until Roy began spending most weekend nights sleeping at Riza’s. The woods brought with them a reassuring quiet, a stillness that was so juxtaposed to the overly-lively goings-on of the bar downstairs that he usually conked out the moment his head hit the pillow. Plus Riza was nice, seemed to revel in the company he provided in return—Roy would never say it aloud, but he sometimes got the impression that she drifted through school and home, unattached and unbound, a solitary balloon threatening to float off into the horizon without something to anchor it. She wasn’t exactly the outgoing type, either, so it wasn’t as though she actively sought anything to ground her, either.

Well, she and Roy were in the same boat, in that manner. He didn’t really fit in with other kids his age, either finding friendship in adults or his elders, like with Maes, or with younger kids, like Riza and a few of the other students in lower grades that he tutored. In some strange way, he and Riza thrive off each other, use each other as a mainstay, something that binds them to another life.

So Roy stays over on the weekends, helps Riza with her homework, and just generally tries to keep as far out of her father’s way as he can. The only time Berthold showed any hint of being uncomfortable with the arrangement was one time when he beckoned Roy into his office with a single, spindly finger and a glower that reminded Roy of the look the Madam got before she grounded him.

“What exactly are your intentions towards my daughter?” Berthold asked after Roy closed the door behind him.

He blinked. “She’s... my friend?”

“Do you have any intention of fooling around with her?”

Riza is a whole three and a half years younger than him.

“Answer.”

Vaguely terrified, Roy shook his head fiercely.

“Good.” Then Berthold waved him off and promptly decided to continue ignoring Roy’s existence.

They never revisit the conversation. There are no further objections. Roy assumes the man is satisfied with his answer. He keeps coming over.

On this warm summer night, Roy protests the idea of staying at the Hawkeyes’—not because he doesn’t want to see Riza. He would just prefer staying up all night because the bar is loud beneath the floorboards rather than because the thoughts in his head blare against the eerie silence. But the Madam is insistent, says he needs a good night’s sleep, it’s non-negotiable, go on then.

It worries him that she pushes the issue so much. She never did that before.

It means something’s wrong.

So he packs an overnight bag, as is customary at this point, then begins the arduous trek through town to the edge, where the Hawkeye cottage sits like an eyesore half-hidden by the greenness of the woods. It’s a falling-apart structure, held together only by its own stubbornness to persist, even as its once-homeliness continues to deteriorate steadily.

Riza must have been peering out the window in anticipation of his arrival, because the door swings open before he can even raise his hand to knock.

“Hi, Roy,” she says pleasantly, and invites him in with a handwave. “Say, I went into the woods and I found this thing, it’s really neat-looking and—” Something must show on his face, because her smile drops and is quickly replaced by worry. “...what’s wrong?”

He drops his overnight bag off to the side. They sit down on the couch, and he tells her.

A few beats of silence pass between them as the burden sits out in the open, airing out after spending almost the entire day cooped up inside the cage of his ribs.

“I’m sorry,” Riza says finally. It sounds flimsy, though, and they both know it.

His sneakers hit the coffee table from where he swings his feet out off the edge of the couch, and he exhales through his nose. “It’s not your fault.”

“Still.”

Another sparse silence follows.

“Is there anything I can do?” Riza asks.

“Not unless you can find someone who can protect Aunt Chris from the cops.”

To his surprise, her face scrunches almost thoughtfully. “...there might be someone.”

“Huh?”

“Did I ever tell you about my grandfather?”

That has him blinking dumbly. “I didn’t know you  _had_  any grandparents.”

“Well... I  _sort_  of do.” Now she looks sheepish, and she turns away as though she’s ashamed of having omitted this. Not that he’s upset or anything—just surprised. He thought she only endured the squalor because there was no alternative. “My mother’s dad. He, uh, was  _really_  against her and Father marrying. So they ran away, and after they got married, Father filed for a restraining order—I don’t think my mother knew, though. It basically means I never get to see him. I don’t think he even knows I exist.”

Oh. That’s...

Riza must sense his unspoken sympathetic platitudes, because she is quick to change the subject. “But, I think he might work in law enforcement or something. At least—he did when my mother was still alive. So maybe...”

Roy is struck by what she is offering him. Because there is an uncertainty in this proposal, one laced with the potential to be painful, to awkward and embarrassing and to walk the tightrope of chance where rejection could await her at the bottom. All of this is a specter that haunts this profoundly selfless gesture—and it is offered willingly for the simple purposes of securing his happiness.

“Riza,” he murmurs, and then swallows around a sudden thickness in his throat.

She smiles weakly, but without hesitation. “Father would know how to find him.”

“You don’t have to—”

“We can’t let them take you away,” she insists.

He may be thirteen-going-on-fourteen, but he is struck with the urge to cry like he is much younger. Seeing this, Riza presses her palm to her mouth to suppress what is probably a smile.

So they go to Berthold’s study and knock loudly and forcefully until he’s annoyed into emerging, lip drawn into a sneer. As Riza presents the idea, lays it bare like blowing on a seeding dandelion and watching in wonder as the fluff take to the skies, Roy watches the slow transformation of annoyance to repulsed take place on her father’s face. By the time Riza’s finished, there is a vein throbbing on Berthold’s temple.

“ _Absolutely_  not.”

Riza’s smile falters, but it remains there—disbelief cements it into place. “But Father—”

“ _No_. You—You don’t know that man. But  _I_  do. He  _cannot be trusted_.”

Coming from any other adult, that would have made Roy wary. But he has never been too swayed by Mr. Hawkeye’s opinions, usually because they seem to be made on whims and then clung to out of sheer obstinacy. Even further, paranoia runs through his veins instead of blood, making the man wary of any adults other than himself, though Roy can’t help but think that Berthold is likely to shatter mirrors if he thought his own reflection would turn against him. This is probably the reason for his adamance, which only seems to have strengthened when confronted by a contrary position presented by his own daughter, of all people.

But Riza is not inclined to let the matter rest. “But Roy—”

And all of sudden Berthold’s ire is on the intruder to his home. “Then  _Roy_  can  _get out_.”

That is how Roy ends up standing on the porch step of the cottage, the door slammed in his face and his belongings thrown headlong into the dirt, all but banished and with the threat of the police being summoned should he ever dare to approach now hanging over his head.

He walks a few paces away as the shouting blares through the walls. Then, abruptly—quiet.

A few minutes later, Riza emerges with a bright red mark on her cheek and tears in her eyes and her shoulders hunched. “Let’s go,” she says icily, and her backpack is slung over her shoulder, a wooden brown corner and the head of her pellet gun jutting out from a half-done zipper.

Dumbly, he watches as she starts forward, marching off like a soldier to war never expecting to see home again. Guilt pangs through him at having caused this, having stirred trouble where there was none, her predicament springing from his own plights. “Riza—”

“Your aunt gathers information, right?” She doesn’t even look over her shoulder as she says this, just continues stomping down the path.

“...yeah.” The sun is setting, what fractions of the sky are discernable through the haze of the forest—its greenness now a dark backdrop, the trunks slicing against vivid color like the iron bars of a prison—glows deep amber. Black stripes spill like the wanton strokes of a fountain pen, their own shadows joining the line-up in exaggerated proportions.

“Then she can probably find him.”

Perhaps a better friend would ask, would hasten after Riza and then grab her by the shoulder to stall her, coax out the awful things swimming in the space between her lungs. Roy bites the inside of his cheek, but can’t find it in him to raise his hand.

* * *

It is nightfall by the time they finish tracing their way through the town, carving their way across familiar streets while they maintain a precedent of silence all throughout. Because it’s a small town, there are no drowning lights like there are in the city, so the dark heavens are free to press itself as closely to the buildings as it wishes while the stars slowly emerge like sleepy eyelids slowly fluttering their way open.

In the darkness, the cut of red-blue flashing lights is much cleaner, much more precise, like a scalpel in the hand of a licensed professional rather than a clumsy novice. Those lights wash over building corners and sharpen the shadows, turn what was once seemingly innocuous into a hidden danger. Intermittently, the police cars either blend in or stand out starkly, their black-white visage a stark dichotomy that is indecisive in how vocal it wishes to be. The sight of them makes dread pool in Roy’s stomach, then sink unceremoniously to his toes like a stone you skimmed on the surface of a liquid abyss before gravity dragged it down to the bottom. His footsteps come to a screeching halt as his mind struggles to process the scene painted out plainly before him.

There are policemen, uniformed, questioning a few people that Roy vaguely recognizes as frequent customers. One or two of the servers are also present among the disarray. Madeleine, a woman under the Madame’s employ for longer than Roy has been alive, hugs herself around the jacket thrown hastily over her short, tight-fitting dress while she glares at the officer scribbling things down in a notepad.

Briefly, Roy scans the crowd for Hughes, and is more than a little relieved to come up short. But it only dents the panic that rises up to surge through him bodily, claim his circulatory system and quicken the sound of his heartbeat in his eardrums.

Beside him, Riza stalls, and he can feel the alarm in her eyes without looking as she glances over at him. He does not mind her, barely even registers her presence anymore. His feet move on their own accord, slipping past the police officers as swift as a shadow in the corner of your eye, then ducking into the bar before anyone else can see. He doesn’t need to look to know that Riza is at his heels.

Inside is almost as much pandemonium as outside. Broken glass glitters like a fractured star across the checkered tile, being hastily cleaned by someone Roy recognizes as a member of the kitchen staff. Some plates of food have been left untouched in the booths, dirty plates abandoned in favor of the immediate damage. More shattered glass is sprayed across the bar counter, over which pools of various liquids ranging from clear to brown to a few other brighter, more sensational hues bleed into one another as testament to customer dissatisfaction. The back door is slightly ajar, revealing a glimpse of what lays beyond—a sliver of a linoleum floor, but nothing else. Off to the side, the Madam is speaking to couple of the girls, who perch tremulously on the red leather barstools as they try to restrain the shock carved into their features. There is a sternness about the Madam as she addresses them, her mouth drawn into a grim smear of red lipstick.

Eyes wide, Roy takes a single step away from the glass, and this alone catches the Madam’s attention. She breaks off mid-sentence to whirl around and march over to Roy, then plant her hands on her wide hips.

Her dark eyes are quick and keen as they not only assess Roy, but also flicker over to acknowledge Riza, then return to her nephew. “What on earth are you doing here?”

“Father had a fit,” Riza replies tonelessly. The words paint lines, but the empty space between them is so wide you don’t need to squint to see it, to guess that this is not a first nor an isolated event.

Another day, that might have worried Roy. But his egocentric self is too hyper-focused upon his own fears, his own worries, to give her insinuations as much thought as they deserve.

Evidently, this is the same for the Madam, whose mouth pinches tight for a moment before she shakes her head as though to clear it. “Fine. Upstairs, now.”

“Why?” is the first word out of Roy’s mouth, but there are so many questions brimming beneath.  _What happened, why are the cops here, why do we need to hide—am I in danger of being carted off to an orphanage?_

“ _Now_ ,” she repeats, more urgently.

If they were not as young as they were, they would protest more. But they are young, and this scares them, and they scamper up the stairs without much protest. Roy does not miss the door closing behind them as they enter the stairwell, nor the distinctive click of the lock.

* * *

Anxiety bristles through every inch of Roy’s being, and it propels him into an aimless pace across the length of the living room. Riza, by contrasts, grounds herself by sitting on the couch cross-legged and digging around through her backpack, as though there’s something in there that can reverse time, change reality, unknot the tension that has wrapped itself around them. Maybe sever the thread entirely. What Roy wouldn’t give for a pair of scissors that would allow him to just cut reality into pieces and remove this entirely from the patchwork quilt of his life.

Glinting gold draws his attention. He turns to find Riza holding up what appears to be a brown wooden box—the wood is dark, smoky in its color and vaguely gives the impression that is expensive in nature, or at least exotic—with a cover that folds over it like the flaps of a cardboard box. An etching in the wood illustrates what appears to be a jungle scene, the foreground comprised of grass blades that swish in alternating directions to completely take up the front of the frame, while further back there appears to be the silhouettes of active volcanoes that burst their way through a canopy of trees. Set on the corners are ovals, within which various other reliefs find sanctuary, as though they crawled into the bubbles in order to escape the influence of the jungle—a rhinoceros leans in to occupy the bottom bubble, an elephant’s head fills the bottom right, the top right occupied inhabited by the full form of a monkey with a curling tail, and the top left oddly depicts the face of a shaggy-haired man with an old-fashioned hat that looks like it belongs in  _Tarzan_.

Bisecting the cover, in large and exotically curling letters that glimmer with tarnished gold leaf, is a single word:  _JUMANJI_.

Roy blinks at the boardgame, puzzled but not enough to draw him away from his nervous anticipation, and its unusual presence exasperates him a little. “What’s that?”

“A boardgame,” says Riza, stating the obvious. When he only frowns at her, she sets it down on the coffee table. “I found it in the woods.”

Still, frowning, he approaches, reluctant curiosity momentarily replacing his anxiety. “In the woods?”

“In an old trunk, covered in chains, sitting in a hole. There was no key, so I shot the padlock off.” The hinges let out a timid and plaintive squeak as she peels the flaps back to reveal a gameboard populated by winding pathways—each one starts in each corner and then winds its way across a surface ridden with green leaf-shaped etchings of various shades. The pathways form a loose square-shaped knot around the polished emerald crystal ball that itself forms a smooth dome rising out from the center of the board to stare up at the ceiling like a bulbous eye.

He squints down at it, puzzled. The inner flaps are decorated in sloppily large text, the comically large paragraphs alternating between being written in glaring scarlet and grim ebony lettering. There’s a compartment tucked away at the bottom of one flap—he opens it to find a set of four game pieces, each one distinct, and a pair of dice.

“Okay,” Roy says, and narrows his eyes dubiously at the sloppy text that paints the flaps. It looks as though someone took a brush and painted them on, rather typed by the mechanical steadiness of a typewriter. In fact, the whole thing seems positively _ancient_ , perhaps even predating the printing press. “What’s this got to do with anything?”

By  _anything_ , he means the thing that is going on downstairs, outside. That called the police here and shattered the glass on the floor and made the Madam lock the door behind them after she hustled them upstairs. Away from outsider’s eyes. The unknown yawns its way through him, parts his ribs and fills the space with enough bristling nerves to cleave him in two. And this boardgame—completely irrelevant to that.

Riza shrugs, and reaches out to pick up the dice. They are bone white, the many dark spots on every facet like beady insect eyes. “I wanted to show you. I thought—maybe we could play it or something.”

“ _Now_?”

She shrugs again, this time with a touch of helplessness. “It’s something to do, at least.”

Around them, the room echoes with its own emptiness. The living room sits almost directly above the bar, spread out with hardwood floors that you’d think would be more adept at shutting out the noise that blares from below—not there is any noise now, no drunken shenanigans that would otherwise interrupt thought, no bawdy laughter or animated chattering of customers. Silence seeps up through the floorboards, curls itself around the legs of the furniture, snares the couch and the coffee table and the pair of love seats. The old television rests with all the stillness of the dead, its screen dark and stoic, impassive in the face of this uneasy anticipation that hangs so poignantly in the air, the VCR sitting atop it like a crown collecting dust. In the corner, the bookcase sits on the floor like a paperweight leveled against government documents. It sits directly opposite of the stairwell which would descend down into the bar, and directly beneath the chord for which the fold-up ladder leading to the attic is stored behind a flap in the ceiling.

The silence is counterpointed by the subtle, near-imperceptible hum of electrical appliances feeding from the power grid, such as the appliances that take residence in the kitchen sitting down the hall, but this hum creates a droning of white noise that is just as stagnant as any noiselessness. It hangs like a mist over the floor, parts around Roy’s feet, spills down the stair case in great icy puffs. It grows fingers to creep its way and trace the framed edges of the various pictures that immortalize the last seven years of his life spent in this place—this home.

Its incorporeal fingertips tap at the window, where faint, diffuse flashes of red-blue light flickers on the windowpane in sporadic flashes. Darkness presses against the glass, seems to pulse as the chaos continues to unfurl from outside. If only the angle weren’t so awkward and offered a better viewpoint.

Roy searches the twitching stillness for some sign, some indication, but it offers nothing.

Nothing.

Sitting here, doing nothing—it won’t change a damn thing.

A groan, or some softer variation of a groan, gets caught in his throat. But he doesn’t protest as he stalks over to the sofa, then sinks into the space next to hers. Loveseats bracket them, like an enclosing hug, but it feels more claustrophobic that comforting at the moment. The light from the lamp on the end table is almost like a mockery. How strange that his home has become so hostile, when the unknown lingers over his head.

“The instructions seem simple enough,” Riza is saying to counter the low drone of appliances that seeks to drown the world out, trap them in this space, squeeze them between the walls. “Basically you just roll and try to get to the center first.”

At some point, when Roy wasn’t paying attention, she set the dice aside and claimed one of the little figurines that are probably meant to be game pieces. The one she has taken out is creamy figurine, too yellow to be properly white and too pale to be yellow. It looks almost like a hippo, with the shape of the snout, and you’d easily mistake it for one if the nubby horns didn’t rise up from its muzzle and mark it as a rhinoceros.

After a moment of hesitation, Roy reaches out to take a figurine for himself. Ultimately, it’s the slate-grey elephant that finds its way into his hand, though he doesn’t have any memory of deciding. It’s small enough to fit comfortably in his palm, but not so much that it could slip through if he didn’t have a tight enough hold on it. He runs his thumb over the length of the trunk, the blunt and curling tusks that frame the appendage—the texture is smooth like plastic, but the heft of it feels more like stone.

“No cards or anything?” he asks. He knows what she’s doing—trying to do. Part of him appreciates it. Another part is infinitely exhausted by it.

Brows furrowing, she closes the compartment for the pieces back up, then rakes her gaze critically across the instructions that are written so sloppily within the flaps. “It doesn’t look like it...”

The hum Roy lets out is more from listlessness than actual contemplation, and he moves to set the figurine down.

Only, he feels it twitch, shudder in his grip like it suddenly came to life. He nearly drops it, but just then it rips itself free from him entirely, all but flies over to a corner space and automatically righting himself. Then it stands still, silent. The small, empty eyes that were carved into the elephant’s triangular face seems to leer at him.

“How did you do that?” Riza asks, her widening eyes flickering over to him.

“I don’t...” Something prickles between Roy’s shoulder blades, like cat kneading into a pillow with outstretched claws.

He reaches out to tug it loose, but it’s cemented itself too the board. Nerves flutter in his belly.

Cautiously, Riza holds her off-white rhino out towards the board. Following suit with Roy’s piece, it shudders, then wrenches itself free from her grip and clatters its way onto the board, planting itself firmly in the corner space opposite of Roy’s elephant. Her face flickers with a shadow of unease as she retracts her hand.

If Roy were smarter, he would take this as a sign. Close the game up, tuck it away in a corner to gather dust for a millennium. They haven’t technically started—haven’t technically rolled the dice and pushed anything into motion and if they knew better, they would take this opportunity to walk away. Run. Pretend none of this ever happened.

But with this apprehension that niggles at his mind is a curiosity, something that somehow bypasses his survival instincts and the quickened pace of his heart in his throat and the dryness that leeches moisture from his mouth. He wets his lips, a little scared but also a little exhilarated by the mystery, the desire to understand this thing that so clearly doesn’t make sense.

“It’s... probably just magnets or something,” he says.

And neither of them calls his bluff.

He grabs the dice that Riza discarded, feels their plastic lightness solid and cool against their palm. As he gives them a shake, though, a thought strikes him—he offers the dice to Riza. “Ladies first?”

It’s meant to be a suggestion, just a joke. The charming smile he offers—oh, Roy Mustang is quite good at charming smiles, let it never be said that he couldn’t disarm the devil himself with a smile—is halfhearted and nervous and not entirely serious. But Riza’s eyes narrow into a glare anyway, perhaps missing the attempt at humor. It gives the impression of being pinned to an entomologist’s wall, pressed beneath a sheet of glass with a massive pin bisecting his torso and leaving him suffocating beneath the claustrophobic hold.

Rather scary, that a ten-year-old can accomplish this.

With a huff, Riza snatches the dice out of his palm. She gives them a shake while muttering something about cowardice, then sets them loose upon the board. The plastic tumbles softly against the wood.

Four and two. Six.

As they still, she reaches out with the intent to move her piece, only to draw back in alarm when the rhino starts forward of its own accord. Roy watches in a state of morbid fascination as the figurine counts six spaces, then slows to a stop.

In the center, something in the green crystal ball shifts, opens its eye and stretches to life as though waking from a long, fitful sleep. Roy’s brows furrow as something almost like smoke unfurls from the center, kind of like watching the diagram of a hurricane on the weather channel, and subsumes what was once a crystal-clear composition.

“Riza,” he says, and she looks up at him from where she was staring dumbly at her game piece. He points at the green center as something flickers into existence. “Look.”

Letters form in yellow mist, fading in and out of existence indecisively, and lingering just long enough for them to be read.

**At night they fly, you better run,  
these winged things are not much fun.**

Something about that prickles all the way down to Roy’s toes. He smothers it with his annoyance at the crypticity. “What does  _that_  mean?”

Rather than respond, Riza reaches out to poke at her piece with enough force to knock it over. It doesn’t even shake. She bites her lip.

The apprehension on her face isn’t worth a little intrigue, especially when she was the one trying to take his mind off his own anxiety-laden situation. Just as he opens his mouth to suggest they stop, though—something clamors in the distance.

They both freeze.

Roy’s mind races. There’s no way someone could have gotten in unless they crawled in through the windows—and the windows are all locked tight, with the sole exception of his room, which lacks a lock because it’s right in front of the fire escape and the Madam is very strict about emergency measures. But the hinges on his door squeak obnoxiously loud, loud enough that people in the bar actually complained about it one time when he left his room to get a drink of water late one night. He would have heard the hinges, and he didn’t, so there’s no way someone came in through his window. And there’s no way someone could have come in through the stairs, because they would have seen, and there’s no way someone could come in through any of the other windows because those are all locked up with the industrial grade stuff that was installed by the clearly-paranoid former owner.

It sounds like it’s coming from the kitchen.

On impulse, he grabs the dice, then folds up the game. The wood isn’t particularly light, with enough solidness and heft to it that having it thrown at you would hurt, if not stun you a while. Also, it makes for a good shield in case someone decides to attack.

Trepidation flickers in Riza’s gaze as he stands, the boardgame pressed over his chest like a schoolboy would hold his books. Reluctantly—and if only because logic dictates he assess the threat before deciding his course of action—he tiptoes his way over to the hallway that connects the living room to the kitchen. After a moment of hesitation, Riza reaches into her backpack and produces her trusty pellet gun. She snags her hand on the back of his shirt and follows after him, the other hand steady on the trigger.

Peering around the lip of the hallway garners him nothing, and someone forgot to turn the lights on in the kitchen and in the hall. A small stripe of yellow is offered from his room, which sits on the hall’s third end—it forms something of a “T” shape, his room occupying the very end, while the doors to the Madam’s room, the guest room, study, and bathroom bracket the length of it—from where the light has been left on by his careless self and the door partially open.

Indecision stalls him for a moment, then he clicks the light on. The bulbs stutter to life. Yellow electric light spills like butter into the kitchen, edges its way across white linoleum tiles and faintly traces the edges of an inert refrigerator, but offers nothing else.

Roy’s heart hammers in the back of his throat. He tries to swallow it back down to his chest as he advances, but it’s a stubborn bastard and remains in place.

The hand not holding the dice shakes as he ghosts it across the wall in search of the light switch. His thumb finds it fight. He flicks it on.

For some reason, the lights are much dimmer, and don’t offer much relief. Perhaps the bulbs are shot. Either way, he doesn’t see any strange figures...

Then Riza squeaks. He follows her gaze to the ceiling.

And meets thousands upon thousands of glittering eyes and glittering fangs.

They  _scream_ , and the dark curtain of furry creatures reacts by taking flight. Blind panic causes the children to turn and launch themselves towards the safe haven of Roy’s room. The slightly parted door stands like a beacon against the wave of screeching and flapping wings that pursues them.

The moment they cross the threshold, Roy whirls around, slams the door shut with a shriek of hinges, and then engages the lock—just as something thumps against it from the other end. The boardgame slips from his slackened grip as shrill screeching rings through the air, and it falls with a muted thump against the carpet, the flaps immediately coming loose and baring the winding paths on the board to the ceiling.

As Roy watches, pulse screaming through his veins and adrenaline stabbing every nerve ending like a hot butter knife, dark shapes attempt to squeeze their way under the door. Only a few gnashing snouts sporting small, needle-like teeth manage to make their way through, but he makes flutter of wingbeats, the twitch of massive ears on furry heads.

Bats.

How—how did  _bats_ —

Behind him, Riza’s harsh panting synchronizes with his own. Her grip on the back of his shirt has released, but one on her pellet gun has gone white-knuckled and she clutches it tightly to her chest like a lifeline. When he turns to glance at her, he sees her eyes impossibly wide, sees that the color has drained from her face and has been replaced by a stark terror that is more befitting of an injured deer cornered by a wolf than a little girl.

“W-What do we do?” Her voice trembles. She looks up at him as though he has the answers.

Which, he really should, shouldn’t he? He’s older than her by almost four years now, has been the one who taught her algebra and arithmetic and been something of a reassurance simply for the fact that he’s been on this earth longer than her.

But—he’s never had to run from  _bats_  before.

Over her shoulder, he catches a glimpse of his window, the nocturnal darkness pressing in against the glass like an unwelcome visitor. He remembers the lack of locks on his window, and why that is.

“The  _fire escape_ ,” he gasps out, and relief mixes sweetly with renewed desperation.

In his haste to make his way over to his bed, his foot bumps against one of the game’s flaps and it nearly trips him. He stumbles, but catches his balance quickly. Shocked, he glances back down.

Neither of the pieces were disturbed by the chaos of a second ago, despite the fact that Roy actually tilted the whole board sideways. In fact, by virtue of how the flaps are designed and whatever force keeps the figurines stubbornly glued in place, you’d never guess it was moved at all.

Light catches the emerald crystal ball, once again clear and gleaming like stained glass. It seems to wink at him coquettishly, alluring, flirting, trying to coax him into falling for its magnetic pull once again.

Only then does he realize he’s still holding the dice.

Through the mortal terror and the panic and desperation, something like a realization dawns upon him. It is half-formed and hazy, distant due to not being at the forefront of his concerns at the moment, but he’s smart and he can connect the uncanny coincidence of bats mysteriously appearing in house with the cryptic message about flying nocturnal things that showed up a few seconds prior. With a snort of disgust, he throws the dice at the board and then turns away.

Of course, the window offers some resistance. It has to, otherwise people could come in willy-nilly. But it slides open under a little force, and the cool night air pours through the opening like a benediction. Just beneath the window, the fire escape offers itself up like a black cage, or perhaps more like a panic room into which you dive at the first sign of danger. Whatever the case, Roy’s relief strengthens tenfold.

“Okay.” He glances over his shoulder, but Riza doesn’t move. Her gaze is pointed down at the floor—and yeah, it’s messy, sure, but it’s not that bad and not the time to be worrying about it. “Riza, we need to go—”

She points the tremulous end of her pellet gun at the floor. “Y-Your piece is moving...”

“What?” He abandons the window to join her, following her gaze to where the game sprawls itself leisurely across his bedroom floor.

To his horror, he finds that she’s right. The slate-grey elephant he picked out is slowly sliding its way across the sinuous winding of the pathway. In of the flaps, the dice sit, bone-white against black spots, face up at six and three. Accordingly, the elephant stops on the ninth space, once again gluing itself in inertia.

Nine. Which is a decent roll in any other circumstances, but—

“The game must think I rolled,” he mutters, eyes wide as smoke stirs to life in the center.

“The  _game_  thinks?” she demands, voice sharp.

Before Roy can say anything else, hazy letters emerge through the jade fog.

**In the jungle, you must wait,  
until the dice read five or eight.**

Fear jangles through him and the door thumps and then his blood boils with a sudden surge of indignation. “Okay,  _that’s_  it!”

He charges with stomping footsteps towards the cursed boardgame. And, as if sensing his wrath, the letters evaporate. The mist in the center, however, is unwise in that it remains, swirling around in its imaginary tropical storm system as though to taunt him further. His fingertips start to tingle with the urge to smash it to pieces.

“I’m throwing this damn thing out the window!” he declares, dropping to his knees. He reaches out to make good on his promise.

Then stops.

Riza squawks in alarm.

Roy stares.

The tingling isn’t from any violent impulse—it’s from the fact that his fingers are dissolving, coming apart, flesh becoming pale dust that is immediately drawn into that damned emerald dome.

Horror surges coldly through his being as the tingling—the dissolving, the his body becoming smoke and dust and a mere whisper of solidity—moves up his hands, his arms, starts in his feet. His heart is pounding louder than the swarm of bats trying to break down his door and his brain just stops for a minute, leaves him staring at his own disappearing in utter incomprehension.

Then it clicks.

Then the terror steals his senses.

Then Roy  _screams_.

He screams as it claims his legs and his torso and his face and his everything as it all becomes dust and mist and is swallowed up greedily by that glowing green crystal ball.

He screams and he screams and he screams until he suddenly isn’t screaming—because he isn’t _there_ anymore.

Drumbeats echo through the night as Riza screams in his place.

* * *

The police find a ten-year-old Riza Hawkeye stranded on the fire escape, shivering and clutching her pellet gun and muttering incomprehensibly about bats and boardgames and the drums that stole her friend away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reference to [what the board](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/de/2b/dd/de2bdd3d81a2aad9752686ef65d6db5e.jpg) [and the pieces](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/6b/92/ec/6b92ecf36a7094a45a821576f406e017.jpg) [look like](https://jsjammersmith.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/jumanji-board.jpg)!
> 
> Before anyone asks: hell yeah I'm doing this. Join me as I descend into crossover hell!
> 
> But in all seriousness, Jumanji is actually one of my all-time favorite movies. Even if the CGI hasn't held up and it was made before I was born, it's still _really good_. Plus, it's really easy to apply the characters of FMA to the movie's premise, like hello? Mustang as Alan Parish? Hawkeye as Sarah Whittle? Ed and Al as the Shepard siblings?
> 
> Seriously, how has no one done this yet???
> 
> But since no one else is gonna do it, I guess I will. So here we go.
> 
> I repeat: join me as I descend into crossover hell!
> 
> Sincerely,  
> The Immortal Moon


	2. Chapter 1: The Brothers Elric

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for mentions of anxiety attacks, trauma and mental illness, medicating, and unhealthy coping mechanisms. Reader discretion is advised.

_~2019_

There are some things in reality that are exaggerated by the media—such as people with DID being homicidal or how doctors always save every patient or how in soap operas everything works out eventually. Happy endings, perfectly ever afters, the hero gets the girl every time. Shit like that.

Unfortunately, it looks like the general dreariness of holding cells seems to be one thing that television and movies manage to capture with stunning accuracy.

Edward Elric narrows his eyes at the world beyond the bars—the dinky little police station seems to him perpetually understaffed. It’s been almost two hours since he was locked into the cell and he’s yet to see the number of blue uniforms rise beyond a grand total of five, even though the shifts have continued to change. One woman, bespectacled and brunette, is laboring over literal mountains of paperwork while groaning about how she wishes she could have worked in a bookstore instead. A man, also brunet, gives the ancient-looking monitor he’s trying to use a light whack, and Ed catches glimpses of frames on his desk that spot what appears to be children’s faces, though the guy looks too young to be a parent, so probably cousins or younger siblings. The woman who arrived to first drag Ed away in the back of a police vehicle, her dark hair cropped boyishly short and a mole sitting just below her eye, is watching him carefully from her desk even as she presumably writes her report, taking the occasional pause to glance distrustfully in Ed’s direction to make sure he hasn’t tried anything.

In response, he just sticks out his tongue. She sighs, then goes back to her report, probably muttering something about the tragedies of poor young kids who’re already starting their life of crime the minute they step into adolescence. He just rolls his eyes and crosses his legs and waits for this whole thing to be over.

Another man walks by, dark-haired and probably the most senior of the officers here, clutching a mug of coffee that doesn’t steam. Ed doesn’t think much of him until that man stops, takes a few steps in reverse, then pins Ed with a wide-eyed stare behind his square-shaped glasses.

“Hey, Ross?” the guy calls out, still staring at Ed. He’s got these hazel-green eyes that frankly quite piercing.

Mole lady looks up. “Yes, sarge?”

“Why is there a ten-year-old in a holding cell?”

Annoyance jabs at Ed’s ribs. “I’m  _thirteen_ , jackass.”

Glasses guy frowns, and Ed bristles. Okay, yeah, he hasn’t exactly hit his stride in terms of puberty yet—but just you wait, he’s going to be so tall he’ll have to bend down to keep from bumping his head in doorways. God knows his old man, bastard that he was, towered over everyone. And even if Ed isn’t super enthusiastic about it, he still has the guy’s genetics, so he’s probably gonna end up tall too. So  _there_!

“Oh.” Mole lady—or, Ross, it sounds like—exhales through her nose. “He set off firecrackers in a bookstore bathroom.”

“That’s  _not_  what happened!” Ed objects.

“And broke a boy’s nose,” Ross adds with a look in his direction.

...okay, well. Ed doesn’t really have a defense to that.

Except that the other guy started it. But that apparently that’s not good enough? What even.

The apparent sergeant blinks, then frowns at Ed dubiously. “ _This_  kid?”

_Hey, police guy. Come over here and say that to my **fist** , why don’t you?_

This prompts the guy with the many siblings to look up. “Well, you know what they say, sarge. People who’re lower to the ground are closer to hell.”

“Oh-ho! You’re fucking  _hysterical_ ,” Ed spits.

Apparently his tone must he harsh enough to imply that he’s going to mangle the monitor guy in his sleep, or something else equally terrible and heinous, because the guy flinches. Ross glares at Ed as though he’s responsible for the fact that monitor guy is clearly way too skittish to be a cop if he’s scared of a kid under five feet (only for now, though—again, he’s gonna grow taller than a _fucking mountain_!).

The bespectacled sergeant sighs and massages the bridge of his nose with his free hand, rubbing right at the juncture where his glasses sit on the bridge of his nose. “You got a name, kid?”

“Edward Elric.”

“Okay, Ed—can I call you Ed?” He doesn’t wait for Ed to respond. “Why did you set off firecrackers?”

“I  _didn’t_ ,” Ed snaps, because this is what he’s been trying to tell these people for  _over an hour_. “The _other guy_ took  _my_  firecracker and set it off.”

“Uh huh. Okay. ...and,  _why_  were you carrying a firecracker?”

A growl rumbles in Ed’s throat, and he says nothing.

“Kid. C’mon. I can’t help you if you don’t tell me anything.”

Suspicious, Ed side-eyes him.

It seems the sarge is able to sense his thoughts, because he offers something like an apologetic smile. “I’ll listen. Promise.”

Yeah, right. Guy’s probably just trying to wring a confession out of him.

But the sarge looks earnest enough. When Ed glances over at Ross, he sees that she’s answered the phone, has since stopped paying attention. The monitor guy has gone back to whacking his dinosaur of a computer. And the girl with the files hasn’t even looked up once during the whole conversation.

It wouldn’t...  _totally_  suck to tell someone his side, Ed supposes.

He exhales loudly through his nostrils, then slowly uncrosses his legs. He makes sure to highlight how one of his knees gives a metallic click as it bends, and he watches the sarge’s gaze quickly dart over the length of it—taking in the stiffness, the flash of stainless-steel peeks through the tears of Ed’s ripped jeans. Automail is expensive, but you’d be surprised how bountiful life insurance can be. “You ever heard the word ‘gimp’?”

Puzzlement twists the man’s face, causes his brows to furrow. “Like... the software?”

“Yeah, that’s what  _I_  thought,” Ed says, and tries to keep his tone light even as he travels back a few hours earlier this morning, the ambiance of the bookstore sinking in to his bones, the solitude of his table in the café and the taste of espresso on his tongue and the smell of parchment in his nose as he buried his face in a good book. Rereading one of his classics. Then he looks up to find an asshole scowling down at his partially-exposed metal leg. “Which is why I was pretty confused when some kid comes over to me while I’m sitting at a bookstore, minding my own damn business, and spits it in my face.”

Almost instantaneously, a mixture of sympathy and anger flashes across the sergeant’s face. It’s a little disconcerting, yet also a little gratifying, to see someone so quick to get offended on Ed’s behalf. Guy doesn’t even know Ed all that well, but the glower on his face speaks to a tentative desire to possibly hunt down the brat who dared level such a derogatory term at him and give him a good old-fashioned talking to. It’s actually almost paternal, that look—Ed wonders if that means the guy’s got any kids of his own, because he certainly looks old enough, and he certainly acts like it.

With a shrug, Ed glances up at the light overhead. It flickers a little fitfully, probably some crossed wire or something. Winry would know how to fix it—not that he’s seen her in a while, and he wonders if she’s still obsessive about taking things apart and fixing them. “He walked away before I could say anything. Then I looked it up—it’s a derogatory term for the handicapped, by the way—and I was  _pissed_. Wanted to clock him, but he was with someone and it didn’t look like anyone else saw and I like bookstores, so I wasn’t about to get banned over some asshole. So I just ignored it.

“Then when I was in the bathroom, he and one of his friends comes in and tries to harass me again. So I punched him.”

That makes the sarge’s sympathy waver, and his brows arch to his forehead skeptically. He levels Ed with a stern look as he brings the coffee mug to his mouth and takes a long, long sip.

Geez. Guy  _must_  be a father. It’s the only explanation to why Ed feels the sudden need to squirm beneath the weight of his gaze. “...okay, I _maybe_ hit him a little too hard and I didn’t really  _think_ , but— _he_  started it!”

“And the firecracker?”

“It fell out of my pocket,” Ed explains, and then jabs his hands into the pockets of his hoodie. It’s unzipped, and the pockets are a little too small, plus he’s got a lot of other things in there as well—like his cellphone and headphones and the smooth leather packet of his wallet. “The other guy grabbed it before I could notice, and then when I tried to get it back from him, he chucked in a urinal. And that’s how the urinal blew up.”

Though the sympathy doesn’t abate, skepticism joins it in equal measure. “It reacted to the urinal.”

Something tickles at Ed’s throat and he hunches his shoulders, remembering when he was eight and invaded the old man’s study to scour his chemistry texts when his back was turned. “The composition of the powder was based heavily on lithium and potassium—and, like all alkali metals, those react pretty strongly to water. I mean, the wrapper was laced with chemicals to keep it stable under normal circumstances, so it wouldn’t accidentally explode if it just got a  _little_  wet, but it’s still reactive and if it were chucked in a urinal that was having trouble draining—like that one obviously was—then yeah. _Big_ explosion.”

“...I see.”

He can tell that the chemistry references go right over the cop’s head, but something keeps the man’s gaze fixed firmly on Ed’s face, meeting Ed’s eyes in a way that is strangely disconcerting. With a huff, he looks away, muttering something halfhearted about plebeians and their inability to comprehend the intricacies of chemistry or some other bullshit to keep him from noticing the way the cop’s glasses flash, the way he sips slowly and contemplatively from his mug.

Then, “How do your parents feel about you making homemade firecrackers?”

A numbness knifes its way up Ed’s flesh leg, starting at the base of his foot with a prickling pins-and-needles sensation. He starts tapping his foot to facilitate better circulation. “When I learn how to talk to ghosts, I’ll tell you.”

Silence inserts itself with all the staggering gracelessness of a first-time stilt-walker. Ed stares at the wall, at the water stains that gather along the corners, where there’s no doubt a leaky pipe that’s the culprit. The overhead lights flicker again.

Quietly, voice raspy, the cop asks, “How long?”

“‘Bout a year,” Ed replies glibly. He glances up at the sergeant and is a little surprised by the intensity of the sympathy he finds there. His earlier assessment about the guy probably being a father himself seems to be holding accurate, because he can see the what-ifs flying through his head. He can see the way the guy’s perception of Ed shifts to fit the mold of some poor little orphan boy who was  _stwanded awone in this big wide world with no one wuv him_!

Ugh. Gag him with a fucking spoon.

...hm.

“They were at a police station—a lot like this one, actually,” Ed begins, and watches as the guy straightens, grip on his mug tightening subtly.  _Interesting..._  “Don’t quite remember _why_ they were there, only that this one guy who was being processed or whatever pulls a gun and he started randomly shooting people. The cops managed to detain the guy, but not before dear ol’ Mom and Dad end up with bullets in their brains.”

Horror carves out the planes of the man’s features, snatches away the color from his complexion and leaves a grim line in his mouth, so genuine and stark that it actually surprises Ed a little. A nervous look is thrown around their surroundings, as though he’s expected the gunman to sudden appear around the corner to make a bid for Ed’s life, or just to show off his big scary gun in order to squeeze the piss from Ed’s bladder. The sheer intensity of his expression catches Ross’s attention and has her looking up from penning down whatever the civilian has to say.

“Listen, Ed,” the guy starts tentatively and holy shit, holy shit this is  _happening_ , “if you need anything or—”

He’s cut off by Ed slapping a hand over his mouth to contain his snickering but failing miserably.

“...uh, Ed? You okay?”

This is—this is just too much. Ed gives up trying to fight it and just laughs outright. “Oh, shit, you actually _bought_ that.”

Guy blinks dumbly. “...what?”

“It was just a plain old car accident,” Ed explains, swiping a tear from the corner of his eye. Oh, boy, it’s been a while since he laughed that hard. That felt good. “We were driving up to Briggs for a ski trip when this big truck hit an icy patch on the road and skidded. Caught us and two other cars. That’s all.”

Which is pretty mundane, as far as deaths go. Car accidents feel like an everyday occurrence—something you catch sight on the freeway, the crumpling damage of a fender bender or some idiot who swerved into a tree and smashed themselves against the solidness of the wood, seeing the police lights flash after having arrived at the scene to make sure that everyone is alright. None of that damage is so serious as to take a life, though the commercials about drinking responsibly emphasize that not all car accidents are so minor. One thing the media loves to exaggerate is just how deadly those are, accidents on the open road where something happens, some idiot wasn’t paying attention, and then that becomes the cornerstone of the orphaned protagonist’s tragedy.

Parents aren’t around because they died in a car crash. Why a car crash? Because they’re common, because they happen, because everybody bumps into everybody and it’s easy to patch on “car crash” instead of going into specifics like—like an illness or something. Cancer’s another overplayed trope to bury loving parents, but car crashes are less medical, more sudden, and a good way to remove both parents out of the picture while cancer can only explain away one.

Rarely ever do they talk about how terrible it is, to be trapped under a steaming metal wreckage while there’s shrapnel imbedded in your leg and glass in your arm and you’re screaming for help but there’s nobody to hear you.

Car crashes are easy, though. You can explain away dead parents and they’re mundane. Common. More common than cancer, even. More common than shootings and sicknesses and being abandoned on a doorstep somewhere. Car crashes. The perfect explanation to all your orphaned protagonist needs! Just remove your creativity and have at it!

Personally, Ed thinks the police station story would be better. It means he isn’t just another cliched victim of an overused tropes. Because when they’re overused and so fucking hammered into the media until they become the nails that frame the whole “orphaned protagonist” schtick, you never think it’ll happen to you. You’re not in a movie or a TV show or a book or what the fuck ever. Of course you’re not going to fall into clichés like losing your parents to a drunk driver or a trucker who hit a patch of ice that wasn’t properly cleared off the road and _why the fuck was there still ice on the road_ —

Focus. Reality’s happening.

Skepticism bleeds into the cop’s expression and Ed knows immediately that he’s probably cost himself some of his credibility. Whoops. “That’s an odd thing to lie about.”

Rolling his eyes, Ed crosses his arms behind his head. The hardness of the back wall rubs against his elbows. “First of all, it’s called ‘creativity’, thanks. Second of all, it’s none of your fucking business anyway, so screw off.”

Glasses gives a skeptical squint. “Okay?”

Figures that Glasses is going to be one of  _those_  people—y’know, the ones who have unnaturally strong opinions about how he should be “coping”. They always mistake their sympathy for empathy and think they _understand_ how he feels, when they really  _don’t_ , because it was a fucking car crash. It was a fucking car crash that came out of nowhere and Ed lost his parents and his fucking leg, so no one is going to fucking tell him how to feel, okay?

And just to spite every know-it-all psychologist who thinks they can read Ed’s mind, he’s going to react in the exact opposite of how he’s supposed. He’s gonna fucking celebrate being an orphan and crack horrifying jokes and come off as a fucking sociopath, because fuck them, that’s why. Do not tell Edward Elric how to react to fucking tragedy. End. Of. Story.

“Well,” the sarge begins again, clearing his throat—he sounds a little more cautious than before but no less sympathetic, and still a little pale from the horror that Ed’s embellishments struck, “I  _am_  sorry about your folks. I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose your loved ones like that.”

Oh boy, here comes the speech. The whole thing about how they’re so, so sorry for your loss, but you’re going to get through this—you’re still alive and your parents would want you to live on for them, and they’re not even really dead as long as you remember them. As though the definition of “alive” isn’t that your heart is beating or your lungs are breathing, but how vividly your image is stuck into some random person’s noggin. So that means Mom _didn’t_  actually die instantaneously when her neck snapped, or the old bastard  _didn’t_ bleed out in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. No, no, they’re still here and hanging over Ed’s shoulder and they didn’t actually die in a _motherfucking car crash_.

A  _car crash_. Because not only does life suck, but it also can’t stand to be a little more _creative_.

Fuck.

“In fact—c’mere.” Glasses guy slides his hand into his pocket and leans towards the bars, his hazel-green eyes flashing in a conspiratorial manner. “I wanna show you something.”

...this is new.

Cautious, but also curious and rather eager to avoid another typical spiel, Ed uncrosses his arms and rises to his feet. The automail admittedly needs a touch of maintenance, so the knee squeaks softly and gives him a so-faint-you-almost-wouldn’t-notice sort of limp as he strides forward a few paces. A whiff of glasses guy’s coffee jabs at his nose—the sharp bitterness of it tempered by the lack of warmth and unnecessarily pungent, which proves once and for all why coffee is utterly disgusting, the only thing that should smell that strong is perfume and cologne and stuff—once he comes close enough. The iron bars cast bold black stripes through the officer’s image, almost like an attempt at a blacklist, but it does nothing to rid the rather disconcerting twinkle set behind the glasses frames as the guy pulls a wallet out from his pocket.

In a snap, it’s open, and Ed has photographs shoved unceremoniously in his face.

“This is my daughter Elysia!” Through the blurring of too-closeness, Ed is vaguely able to make out the indistinct face of a girl and a hazy school uniform. He tries to step back, but the sarge seems to reach _through_ the bars with the intent to plaster the image to Ed’s psyche. “Isn’t she precious? She’s turning seven this year, can you  _believe_  it?” The picture is withdrawn, and Ed is offered a brief respite before another image is thrust before his eyes. “This is her on her tricycle when she was three and gosh, she was _so_ adorable. Not that she’s not adorable now, because she is _absolutely_ adorable! She takes after her mother you know!”

Ed takes the man’s hand and pushes back, which causes the image to become clearer—the girl in the snapshot is indeed closer to three than seven, with caramel brown hair done up in fluffy pigtails and bright celadon-colored eyes and a grin so wide it threatens to split her face. Her little arms are thrown up to the air in reckless delight as her sandal-clad feet push at the peddles of a neon pink tricycle that threatens to blind him with its brightness, the tinsel tassels streaming in the apparent breeze. Very cute, but also very random.

“Uh...”

“Speaking of which!” The tricycle is retracted and quickly replaced by the image of a grown-up version of the girl, one with brown hair that frames her face and flour on her cheek and a flustered smile gracing her pretty features as she eyes the camera lens. Her apron is completely splattered with what appears to be a batter of some kind. “This is my wife Gracia! Is she or is she not the most gorgeous woman you’ve ever seen, right? She used to be in beauty pageants you know—hated them, of course, but she always ended up in a final three. Anyway, she’s also a _fantastic_ cook and her apple pie is literally the  _best_  thing you’ve ever tasted.”

“That’s—”

And then there’s another picture of the girl—older, closer to the age of seven, still baring pigtails but they’re longer and droop silkily rather that stick out in big pompom puffs. She grins unabashedly at the camera, her eyes alight with a subdued mischief. “ _This_ is Elysia on her first day of second grade. She’s going to be _just_ like her mom, I can tell. Can you believe how _big_ she is? They just grow up  _so fast_ —”

“Okay, okay!” Ed snaps, and shoves the photographs away. “I  _get_  it!”

“Touchy,” the sarge sniffs as he snaps his wallet shut. Ed can’t help but notice the smirk that threatens to twitch onto the guy’s face.

He narrows his eyes, jabbing an accusing finger through the bars. “You play  _dirty_ , don’t you?”

“Dirtier than lying about how your parents died?” The sarge takes a long, contented sip from his coffee mug.

Touché. Ed thinks he might just like this braggy bastard.

“Sergeant Hughes,” Ross’s voice comes, thankfully interrupting before anymore photos can find their way into Ed’s personal space. She approaches, casting a cautious glance at Ed as though she suspects that the simple act of his standing is somehow a precursor to more mayhem. “The boy’s legal guardian just called. She’s on her way.”

A quick glance at her desk confirms that the civilian woman has been remanded over to the monitor guy. Hm. Ed’s not really sure how police business works, but is it normal for police officers just remand their work over to one another so easily? Isn’t there some kind of protocol for—

Wait.

Wait wait wait wait—

“‘She’?” Ed repeats, and both police officers glance at him. When neither of them look perturbed, a shiver of apprehension skitters down his spine. “Y-You talked to a woman?”

The apparently-named Sergeant Hughes blinks. Ross frowns suspiciously. “I did,” she says, and Ed’s stomach sinks to his toes. “Why?”

Oh dear god.

“Lock me up.”

“What?” Hughes asks.

“I’m guilty. I did it.” He scrambles to the back of the holding cell, the gross and dirty corner he curls up in smelling faintly of urine but it’s probably the safest place to be, aside from a different fucking building. Or a different town. A different country. A different fucking _continent_. “I’ll—I’ll write a goddamn confession, if that’s what you want. Throw me in jail or juvie or what the fuck ever, just don’t—”

The front door  _slams_  open. Ed’s heart leaps to his throat and it would surprise him  _immensely_  if the thing actually came away undamaged.

“ _EDWARD THEODORE ELRIC_!”

...too late.

Pounding footsteps send the police officers skittering back timidly, like sheep that run away bleating at the sight of the Big Bad Wolf. Through the icy-hot panic that blares bodily through every inch of his being and leaves him paralyzed in the cold grip of utter terror, Ed reasons that the iron bars will surely protect him from a housewife’s wrath. Is that not the whole purpose of the bars? To not only confine, but to protect the inmates from any external retribution? Yes, yes, surely the sturdy and icily cold gleam of solid steel will provide a reasonable deterrent towards the hellfire likely waiting to rain down upon him in a fucking volley and roast him alive.

Right?

But then the woman comes into view, her hair bound in thick inky ropes that are pulled sharply away from her face, revealing a pale visage that is surely the last thing sinners see before hell descends upon them, and Ed’s bladder makes a shriek of protest against the arrangement.

Her eyes smolder as they pin him and oh god, this is it. This is how he dies. Not amidst the smoking wreckage of a fucking cliché car crash, but at the hands of a murderous housewife-slash-butcher who is going to gut him, skin him, feed his entrails to the first pack of wolves that’s available, and then hang his skin on her mantle as a warning to all the others that come after him. What a gruesome way to go.

“Hiiii Izumi.” He tries to smile. It probably looks more like a strangled grimace. “Lovely day today, isn’t it?”

The growl that rumbles in her throat is practically bear-like, and he does not squeak. No, no. He’s a man and brave a-and—oh hell, who is he _kidding_? She’s fucking _terrifying_.

“ _Why_  are you in a jail cell?” comes the question that scrapes its way out like sandpaper, and suddenly the jail bars seem significantly flimsier than the did a second ago.

“I-I—”

“I assume you’re his guardian?” Ross inquires, slowly unfreezing. And just like that, Ed’s respect for the woman shoots way up because damn, lady’s got fucking balls of _titanium_.

“Izumi Curtis,” Izumi grinds out, her smoldering gaze remaining pinned firmly on Ed, probably with the intent to literally scare him into having a heart attack—which will make the ensuing gutting and skinning process even easier for her. “My husband and I are his legal guardians. What did he do?”

Ross and Hughes exchange a wary look. Ed prays—prays to a God he hasn’t ever really believe in in the first place and then completely denounced after he woke up in a hospital with the majority of his left leg just fucking gone—that they’ll show mercy. Please, please have mercy on the poor orphaned disabled boy, please—

“He broke another boy’s nose and blew up a urinal, ma’am,” Ross explains.

...fuck.

“You  _what_?!” Izumi thunders. Ed swears the heavens _tremble_.

“T-The urinal  _wasn’t_  my fault!”

For a moment, she looks ready to strangle him. He can literally see the engraving on his tombstone, curtesy of Al— _Here lies my stupid big brother, who died at the tender age of thirteen by provoking our murderous legal guardian. He will be sorely missed, but at least now he can’t wake me up with his snoring._

Oh god, his life is going to be reduced a sarcastic comment. Shit.

Then she exhaled loudly—loudly enough to make canyons quake and mountains rumble—and reaches up to pinch the bridge of her nose. “You’re _grounded_.”

“B-But—”

“ _Grounded_ ,” she snaps, and the very earth quakes. “For _ten_   _years_.”

Outrage makes him bolder. “That’s not  _fair_!”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have  _broken a boy’s nose_ , then!”

Probably the only thing that keeps her from throwing him against a wall is the bars. Ed is suddenly immensely thankful for the existence of holding cells, dreary or otherwise.

Evidently deciding that he has been cowed sufficiently, Izumi turns away from Ed and aims her smoldering gaze upon the cops. With a cleverness stepped in self-preservation instinct, Hughes tenses in anticipation, taking a small step backwards as though that will somehow save him from another explosion of rage. Ross, however, remarkably manages to stand her ground.

But Izumi only crosses her arms over her chest, tight like a vice clamping around someone’s skull. “Is there anything I need to sign to have him remanded to my custody?”

Still a little wary, Ross nods. “Over here.” She starts making back towards her desk, gesturing for Izumi to follow. After casting another glare promising a brutal murder in Ed’s direction, she does so. “I should warn you, the bookstore is talking about pressing charges...”

Their voices hush as they get further away, removing themselves from Ed’s immediate view. Just in case, Ed remains very, very still—when it comes to Izumi Curtis, you can never be sure that moving too much won’t reignite her temper. Or have her throwing knives at you. Big scary knives that are bloody from cutting up animal parts and sink into the wall just above his head and make him nearly pass out. Ed’s muscles start to ache from the stiffness of the position, but they can pipe the hell down, because he wants to _live_ , thank you.

Hughes’s gaze follows the two women with a glint of caution. When they’re far enough away, their voice drifting out of hearing distance, he turns away to draw a long sip of cold coffee. He seems more bemused than anything. Like—like it’s normal for housewives to just barge into police stations and slam doors and yell threats that they are Very Likely to follow up on.

Something seems to dawn on the sergeant suddenly, which causes his brows to furrow and he lowers his mug with a grim frown upon his face. “Wait,” he says, glancing over at Ed. “When she says ‘Curtis’, does she—does she mean like the Curtis butchery—”

“—that opened up in the old Twisted Midnight building?” It...  _looks_  like the coast is clear. Cautiously, oh so cautiously, Ed uncurls from the position he wedged himself into and ohhhhh, the stiffness that found its way into the curve of his one functioning knee is _violently_ opposed to the prospect of standing. Shit. “Yeah, that’s the one.”

Almost immediately, a solemnness overcomes Hughes’s expression, and he is quick to avert his eyes as though in shame. The people of Dublith get awfully jumpy when it comes to Twisted Midnight, Ed finds. What gossip surrounds it is insidious in nature, though no one is for sure able to pinpoint the precise cause of its closure without wild speculation rearing its ugly head. And those who do know the true story are unusually tight-lipped about it, while the dubious history has proven sufficient to birth the conviction in some of the more superstitious folks that the building found itself haunted by the ghost of the young boy who vanished without much of an explanation. Some of Ed’s more sadistic classmates like to remind him persistently that he is around the same age as Roy Mustang was when he allegedly vanished into thin air—though that is not the only thing about the property that caused its market value to plummet so.

At the very least, the cheapness was a boon for Sig and Izumi, and allowed for money in the budget for a complete renovation. Since their moving in, the backroom was successfully converted into a stainless-steel freezer for meat products, the liquor shelves removed and sold to pay for the paint job to cover up the wallpaper, and ripped up the old hardwood floor to replace with sleek linoleum tiles. You wouldn’t even recognize the place now. But business at the moment is slow-going because the older folks are more suspicious, more cautious, all too keen to remember an event that had literally nothing to do with them.

People are coming around now, slowly. The Curtises are good butchers, and one of the few artisanal butcher shops that are actually operational in the town. And their product is much better than the bland stuff you get at the grocer’s, gossip about the premises be damned.

Since they’re talking about the old building...

“Hey—Hughes, right?” Hughes doesn’t turn around, which is kind of rude, in Ed’s opinion. He takes a few steps forward, coming close enough that he could jab the sergeant in the arm if he wanted to—not that Ed is going to, he doesn’t think he’s _that_ annoying. “Is it true that place used to be a drug den?”

Honestly, Ed doesn’t expect a response, because none of his schoolteachers are very inclined to indulge him and random strangers usually just narrow their eyes at the gleam of scientific curiosity in his gaze. Most adults just turn away. The real estate agent didn’t even bring it up—they had to find out from gossipy neighbors who suddenly grew very reticent when they were asked about it directly.

But Hughes’s eyes  _flash_  with some protective instinct that is usually reserved for fathers when their child has suffered some serious harm. “The only incident of someone doing drugs in Twisted Midnight is when an idiot employee showed up to work coked out of his mind, misplaced his edibles in an order of chilly fries, then had a meltdown. It was _not_ a  _fucking drug den_.”

...huh. That’s new.

And also... significantly less titillating than the gossip would suggest—which is kind of a let down, actually. Ed was kind of hoping that whatever people were whispering about was actually rather spectacular. Like the mafia using it as a hideout for all their coke, or the employees secretly being drug mules, or there was a huge sting operation in which the ringleader threatened to blow his brains out but was taken down rather heroically by a cop who later won a medal for their heroism. Something spectacular, y’know?

That, though? Boring. The truth can sometimes be so painfully plain. Mundane. Almost as mundane as a car crash.

“Okay, but it was also a brothel, wasn’t it?” Ed asks, because there needs to be something entertaining about this whole debacle. Although—Ed _would_ be interested in hearing about how the person whose plate ended up with the edibles. Did they notice? Eat them? How hilarious was it?

Rather than answer, Hughes drains the last of his coffee, all while casting a rather disapproving sidelong look in Ed’s direction. Strike two. Drat. Ed had heard so much about hookers that he was pretty sure that detail, at the very least, had some weight to. It would at least explain the glitter they found in the backroom-turned-freezer...

“Illegal strip club?”

Hughes’s face screws up in a wince. He lowers his mug, but doesn’t say anything.

One out of three isn’t too bad, Ed supposes. “What about the part where some kid was, like, murdered because he saw a drug deal going down? Roy Mustang, right? I heard they cut up his body and stored it in the walls—”

He’s silenced by Hughes’s veritable  _glare_. Something as sharp and piercing as an icepick sliding innocuously between your ribs and then all of a sudden you realize you’ve just been mortally wounded. And terror creeps through your veins like frost, clasping itself around your lungs in a numb-fisted fury. Geez—if Izumi Curtis is the Queen of Murderous Glares, then Hughes is at least an unofficial member of her inner court.

“Start getting some new hobbies, kid,” Hughes says with a chilling calm, then turns and walks away.

Ed blinks, then frowns at the cop’s retreating back.  _The hell is **his**  problem?_

* * *

Attics usually come in one of two flavors—either they are dusty and abandoned, empty of all things save the pervasive scent of mildew mixing stuffily with the thickness of dust in the air, or it will be filled to the brim with things that the old owner left behind and is therefor a veritable treasure trove of another family’s memorabilia. Sure, there’s the occasional attic that’s converted into a bedroom, made cozy enough for a young child to find the appropriate solace and privacy that you’d usually find on the same level as the other bedrooms, but for the most part, attics are either abandoned or overly cluttered.

Theirs seems to be of the latter variety. Towers of cardboard boxes form a veritable cityscape of abandonment. Many are marked with words like “fragile goods” or “this way up”, and some have a hastily scrawled synopsis of their contents filled in on a label printed in black into upon the sides, right beneath a company logo. Among the list are “bedroom items”, “kitchen appliances”, “photo albums”, and “various miscellanea” that provide a comprehensive categorization to the things that the old owner could no longer take with them. The exact reasons all of these things were left to die a slow, meaningless death in the isolation of a dusty old attic are dubious and muddled by the swirl of gossip that eddies around the property, but the fact remains that there is something almost tragic about the fact that these items were never claimed.

Maybe there was just no one else who cared enough. Maybe the city wouldn’t touch it, and maybe nobody would buy it, due to the circumstances that surrounded the missing boy and his condemned caretaker to which these items once belonged to. Either way, it makes for a cluttered attic, and cluttered attics are usually the most tragic.

Though it is by no means lacking in dust, even with the clutter filling the space so greatly there’s little room to walk about and even less room for dust to form. But when Alphonse Elric tentatively swipes his fingertip along the edge of a folded-up cardboard box, it comes away completely grey with the thickness of the layer that cakes it.

“So,” the exterminator says, shining his flashlight up at the rafters, and Al’s heart leaps to his throat in remembrance of the shining eyes that gleamed down at him the first time he dared to venture up here. “What exactly did these bats look like?”

“Well, I didn’t see ‘em,” Sig admits, and crosses his thick arms over his broad chest. He’s build like a mountain, Sig. The bushy thickness of his bread and the pale scar set on his swarthy brow often gives an intimidating impression, but it should be noted that he’s the less fearsome of the couple. “Al saw ‘em, though. Screamed real loud.”

Okay, well, that wasn’t really necessary. Like, of _course_ Al screamed—there were _bats_ hanging from the rafters and they were _huge_ and they had  _fangs that could very easily puncture his jugular_. But it’s not as though anyone needs to know that he spent a whole minute shrieking while Brother attempted to untangle his prosthetic leg from the ladder after his hasty attempt to reach him. They don’t need to know that he spent fifteen minutes sobbing into Brother’s shoulder, or that the next hour afterwards consisted of him shaking and hugging himself as everyone tried to reassure him that it’s okay, it’s all over now, everything’s fine. His panic attacks and traumatic reactions are _his_ business, and not that of a stranger’s.

It seems that Sig realizes his mistake a moment later, because he casts an apologetic look at Al. See? Sig Curtis is a sympathetic sweetheart—not that Izumi isn’t sweet or sympathetic, but hers is of an abrasive variety that finds itself protected by a prickly rind of explosive tempers and threats of bodily harm. A lot like Brother, actually. Although, Brother is less likely to follow up on those threats.

Or, at least, he didn’t  _used_  to be...

Too late, realizes that the exterminator is staring at him expectantly.

“...Al doesn’t talk,” Sig says, before the shameful little squeak building in Al’s throat can properly vocalize. Thank the universe for Sig.

Puzzlement causes the exterminator’s face to scrunch, and Al can see that he’s quick to latch onto the word “doesn’t”. Not “can’t”, because “can’t” isn’t a choice—it’s a physical impediment, something in the body that is defective but far out of someone’s control, since surely no one asks to be mute or perpetually silent, allowing the words to pile up slowly within the walls of their throat until it creates a lump so big and thick it’s impossible to swallow down.

But “doesn’t” is an act of volition, the defect located in the mind rather than the throat, is some misfire of the neurons that is somehow infinitely more pitiable but infinitely less sympathetic than anything physical. Most people have never heard of “selective mutism”, don’t quite understand the ramifications it has upon someone or the anxiety that lodges itself in your lungs when the words just _won’t come out_ , and then they get impatient because they think the “selective” part is somehow within your control, like your brain can will itself to work when you can’t do the same with your body. And if people aren’t convinced that Al is faking, then they become certain that it must be some sort of trauma suffered to his brain that is keeping his voice locked up.

 _Brain damaged_ , whisper some of the kids at his school when he happens to drift through the halls, if only because “retarded” is now considered insensitive and somehow “brain damaged” is a kinder alternative.

Sometimes, Al is almost convinced they’re right. It’s not like it’s normal for people to come out of a deep coma with stitches on their skulls as evidence where they had emergency surgery, only to have a bad reaction to the anaesthesia and end up sleeping two whole months of their life away. It’s not like it’s normal to wake up with your older brother at your bedside and watching him nearly weep—especially when you have never seen him cry, not even when he broke his wrist falling out a tree—over something as simple as your eyes fluttering open. It’s not like it’s normal to find that the very act of stringing sounds into words makes your heart race and makes you want to duck into a hole.

It’s been a year and sometimes he has trouble remembering what “normal” even _means_.

With a frown, the exterminator clicks his flashlight off, allowing the murk to once again embrace them in its shadowy arms. He attaches the flashlight to his belt, then pulls out a cellphone. It flickers to life when he taps it, bright against the darkness of a space so crowded that the windows don’t even have enough room to spill light. Then he offers it to Al. “Here. This is a catalogue of known bat species. Just scroll through this and find the species you saw.”

Grateful beyond words—whoops, mute pun—Al accepts the phone. The site that’s been pulled up has a beige-yellow background and a vaguely grainy texture to it, with a long list of expertly-taken snapshots that are documented in alphabetical order of their scientific species name. Slowly, carefully, he starts scrolling down the list to find a match to the species whose roost he accidentally stumbled across in his eagerness to explore the new house.

“You’re the folks who just moved into town, aren’t you?” the exterminator asks, perhaps a little more mildly than most people do these days.

Okay, so it looks like it’s safe to rule out _Craseonycteris thonglongyai_. It doesn’t look anything remotely like what Al glimpsed in the darkness.

“Yeah, that’s us.” Sig exhales as he looks around at the graveyard of forgotten things. The boxes collecting cobwebs with how little people want to touch them.

Same with the  _Emballonuridae_  and the _Furipteridae_ families. Too small. The bats Al saw were absolutely _massive_.

“Well, even if the real estate ain’t exactly... opportune.” That, Al thinks absently as he scans the _Hipposideridae_ section, is a nice way to say that the exterminator thinks they should have settled in literally any other building—it’s not the first time someone has said that. “Dublith’s pretty good for raising kids while balancing a small business. School’s good too. Think your sons’ll start fitting in no time.”

Okay. So not  _Hipposideridae_. Gosh, who knew there were so many species of bats? There must be _literal_ hundreds. He hastens past pictures that show off specimens that lack the long, svelte body and the narrow snout of what he saw. Tries not to think too much about how bothered he is by the fact that the exterminator mistook him for Sig’s son—like, no offense to Sig, or to Izumi, but neither Al or his brother resemble them in anyway, their golden coloration a direct juxtaposition from pitch-black hair and eyes. Not that adoption isn’t a thing, but...

“God sons,” Sig corrects, not unkindly. “In all sense but the religious, really. My wife attended university with their mother, and she had chemistry classes where their father was a TA. Used to brag all the time about being the one who fixed them up. After their folks died, we took them in.”

The bats in the pictures start to elongate and enlarge upon reaching the _Pteropodidae_ family. Al tries to focus on that instead—instead of remembering Mom’s smile and the sound of her voice and the warmth of her hugs. Instead of remembering the occasional flash of pride that Dad would give them when he wasn’t obsessing helplessly over his research. Instead of remembering the incomprehension that seized him when he was told that they were both gone, had been gone for months, Al slept through the funeral—

“...I see,” the exterminator says after a minute, in lieu of an apology.

Oh!

Al pokes at Sig’s elbow. His adoptive father turns to him, and Al shows him the screen, pointing at the picture.

“This the one?”

He gives a so-so gesture. He wouldn’t say the species he saw looked  _exactly_  like  _Pteropus vampyrus_ , but the size and similarities are close enough.

Brows raised, the exterminator leans over to have a look himself. Sig shows him, pointing to the picture that Al indicated towards. But the exterminator frowns.

“You couldn’t have seen that species.”

“Why not?” Sig asks while Al frowns back.

The exterminator sniffs, which causes his silvery mustache to give a twitch. “The _kalong_  bat is native to the southeastern jungles of Xing. There’s no  _way_  they’d be _anywhere_ around here.”

Frown deepening, Al snatches the phone back, then taps at the image again. More insistently this time.

“I don’t know what to tell you, kid. The only way you could have seen one of those is in a zoo, and there’d have been something on the news if a whole flock escaped.” The exterminator adjusts the bill of his hat. “You _sure_ that’s what you saw?”

It’s very hard not to take offense to that. The man is only asking a simple question—it’s just hard to ignore this soft, poisonous whisper in the back of Al’s mind that says  _he probably wouldn’t have asked you that before, before you could talk and you were **smart** , you skipped a grade, you got higher grades than your  **brother**  (because you actually had the patience for school), you got compliments from all your teachers, and  **now**  you’re—_

But he ignores the voice and nods. Firmly.

All of a sudden, the exterminator is examining Al a little more closely. “Hm...”

“What?” Sig asks, with just the hint of a warning.

“Nothing,” says the exterminator in a way that definitely does not mean nothing. “Just, a girl said she saw something similar a decade and a half ago, before the place shut down—of course, there was no evidence of any bats, either. And there were drugs here, y’know? It’s likely she accidentally got herself high and just hallucinated the whole thing.”

...Al isn’t even sure where to  _start_  to feel offended.

Luckily, Sig may be a sweetheart, but he’s even less likely to take bullshit than Izumi is. “If he says that’s what he saw, then that’s what he saw.”

Skepticism emerges on the exterminator’s face, but he sighs and pulls out his flashlight again and shines a blinding beam up upon the bare rafters.

Only when Sig reaches out to tug the phone loose from Al’s grip does he realize how hard he was squeezing,

After a few seconds of roving the light around, the exterminator clicks his flashlight off again. “Well, there’s no trace of any guano, so if they _were_  roosting here—”

“They were.”

“—then it wasn’t for long.” The exterminator clips his flashlight to his belt, then reaches out to reclaim his phone. Sig grudgingly hands it over. “And there’s no guarantee they’ll come back.”

“And what if they do?” Sig inquires, raising a brow.

“Then call. We’ll have another look. But at the moment, I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do.”

Even if it’s said in a reasonable manner, a protest still rises in Al’s throat—but it gets lodged in his faulty vocal chords, tangled around a voice box left shattered the impact that truck made on their car. Stupid defective brain, cutting the connective neural functions existing between thought and speech and making anxiety well in his belly at the mere thought of uttering a peep.

Sig opens his mouth to start asking about preventative methods, about some kind of repellant that will keep them from sitting around waiting and wondering if and when the bats will return.

And that’s when Al hears it.

It is, at first, a soft staccato rhythm. Innocuous as a heartbeat pressed flush against your ear, the beat steady and comforting and almost sleepy. But then whatever it is seems to start waking up, because is gains energy, pace quickening and loudening and Al’s brows furrow because it sounds like—

_...tribal drums?_

To his bewilderment, neither Sig or the exterminator seem to notice.

The tempo becomes more relentless, like the demanding knock of someone on your front door who won’t leave you be until you at least acknowledge their presence. Tentatively, Al takes a few steps away from Sig and towards the source of the soundwaves that are currently making impact with his eardrums, but apparently goes unnoticed by the adults.

Whatever it is tugs him over to a lone box thrown hastily in a corner, the dust thick as it forms an ashy blanket across the tape-sealed flaps that form its top. A small, compact window hovers above it, which casts a bright slant of autumn light across the faded cardboard and the smudged sharpie ink on the side that proclaims its contents to consist of more childhood belongings. The box seems to tremble where it sits, something pent-up vibrating from within the cardboard prison that confines it, an indignant prisoner throwing a fit at their wrongful conviction and pleading for justice to be found in their release.

Perhaps justice exists, in this case. The drums echo through the air as though giving a war cry and before Al’s eyes, the tape that binds the flaps begins to curl. The glue that holds it in place suddenly seems to shrivel into dust, lose its adhesive power, then peels back with a tantalizing slowness.

On a whim, Al reaches out and just yanks the rest of the tape off. It lets out a soft, hissing noise as it is ripped away, but otherwise doesn’t protest. There’s this strange sensation of dissociation—of his arms feeling suddenly numb and detached from his torso—as he reaches out to pull the flaps back. Immediately, he is met by dozens of picture frames, each one portraying the duo of an older woman with age starting to show in the lines of her face and a cherry red smile, with dark hair and eyes that are mirrored by the boy at her side who ages steadily from photograph to photograph. Pushing photos aside reveals old bedsheets depicting the likeness of a cartoon that must have been popular in the early 2000s, though had retained something of a cult following despite it no longer being mainstream, because Al is able to recognize the figures that dash across the comforter. And beneath that—

Gold letters gleam at him, like something precious. All of a sudden, the drumming falls into a deathly silence.

With great care, the boardgame is unearthed from beneath the childhood miscellanea. Its heft surprises Al, the wooden compactness a little unwieldy but not altogether unmanageable. It seems that whatever it is, it’s inspired by a jungle theme—at least, if the front cover is anything to go by. But it’s old in a way that suggests even the twentieth century was used it, dated by its lack of hyperrealism and detail that has gone into the cover’s illustration, almost implying that whoever designed it was themselves ignorant of the jungle and merely wanted an interesting theme for their game.

Gold gilt letters catch the wan light stuttering its way through the high window. Trace the curvature of the lettering that makes up the exotic word.

_JUMANJI_

It sounds like something forbidden, and for good reason.

“Al!”

He jumps at the sound of his name, and whirls around to see Sig peering at him from around the corner of a particularly large tower of dust and boxes. A furrow has taken residence in his adoptive father’s brow, one that is as bemused as it is concerned.

“I’ve been calling your name for the last minute and a half,” Sig says.

O-Oh. Al hadn’t heard him.

“I’m going back downstairs. You coming?”

Hastily, he nods.

Sig hums and turns away, and if he even notices the boardgame in Al’s hands, he doesn’t comment on it. Speaking of the boardgame, it would probably be best to put it back—just tuck it in the box like he never saw it at all. It would be easy, too. It’s not even really Al’s business to be unearthing such a thing, when it is clearly the possession of someone else, someone who left it behind but still must have treasured it for everything to still be in such good condition despite its age. Just holding it makes Al feel a slight twinge of guilt for having even rifled through the box in the first place.

But something about the heft, uncomfortable even as it is, makes Al reluctant to set it aside. Instead, he finds himself taking it with him as he follows after Sig.

It was left behind, after all. It’s theirs now. And what’s the worst that can happen from laying claim to it?

* * *

October has a firm hold over Dublith. It hangs bright in the air, pales the sunlight so that it strikes the pavement even harsher than it would normally and carves dark shapes out of the shadows cast by the slant of buildings. Sharp autumn crispness, even in its early stages, flashes brightly across the body of cars that whiz past. The windows of the bookstore gleam almost tauntingly at Ed, the books on display ever out of his reach now that his photo has been pasted on a corkboard of people who are no longer allowed within the premises.

Strapped in the passenger’s seat, he shifts irritably. Izumi asked him if he would be bothered by being left alone in the vehicle while she went to smooth things out with the proprietor. He snapped at her for even suggesting something so ridiculous. Okay, yeah, he used to have anxiety attacks from the sound of seatbelts clicking into place and sitting in the backseat too long, but that was months ago and he hasn’t had anything close to that since they first moved here.

So he’s fine. He crosses his arms because he’s impatient and not because he wants to make sure his heart doesn’t try to leap out of his chest. The itch in his port is just a random, unconnected pain—it has nothing to with his mind racing back to the memory of pain searing up his thigh, the crushing weight of twisted metal flattening his torso beneath it, the hot wetness of blood gushing out from where mangled shrapnel pierced clean through muscle tissue.

Nope, not him. He’s fine. Not picturing the windshield fracturing or the whiplash from the impact or the sensation of the seatbelt threatening to cut him in two. Not fighting this sensation of nerves forming a tight bubble between his lungs, pressure building—that dumb psychiatrist is wrong and Ed doesn’t have anything like _clinical anxiety_ or shit like that, he’s  _fine_. His breathing is steady and calm, not shallow and sharp and a desperate attempt to calm his quickened pulse.

It is  _not_  a relief when he catches Izumi emerging from the front door, her shoulders drawn tightly and her ivory face set into a neutral scowl. He does not relax in any way when she huffily tears the door open and then drops into the driver’s seat. That’s ridiculous.

“Oh, look at that,” he drawls as she starts reaching into her purse for her key. “I didn’t hotwire the car and drive into a building.”

That makes her stop and look up at him with an onyx-eyed glare—and if that glare were a knife, it would have sunk deep into his jugular and left him bleeding in a ditch. Swallowing, he turns his gaze out the window in an attempt to avoid it.

“Don’t even start,” she snaps as she jabs the key into the ignition. The engine rumbling to life does not make him tense up in any way. No. He’s fine. He doesn’t have anxiety from sitting in a goddamn car. “Luckily for us, the owner doesn’t want to press charges.”

“That’s good.” Truthfully, he was worried about that. Didn’t want to burden the Curtises with unexpected expenses. They’ve already been saddled with two traumatized kids and he doesn’t—doesn’t want to push their generosity too far.

The stick clicks as Izumi shifts gears. “Yes. Apparently the owner heard from an employee that your beloved grandmother had recently passed away and figured you were just acting out.”

Ohhhh yeah... Ed forgot about that...

“And while she doesn’t think it’s entirely alright to let you off the hook,” she goes on, and the anger mounts with each word, “she does think, since your father is dealing with cancer as well, that you’re going through _enough_   _as it is_.”

Crap. Ed wonders if he can climb out of the car before—

Too late. Izumi pulls onto the road and merges with the lane. Even as her eyes are set on the mirrors, he can feel the smolder meant for him.

“I got a free latte,” Ed offers weakly.

“So you  _lied_  to get  _free things_?”

“...I feel like the right answer here is ‘no’?”

Momentarily, she turns to fix him with a look that would burn him on contact if the heat were physical. But luckily she’s a good driver and doesn’t subject it to him for too long before swerving back around to face the road again.

“Look, they’re  _already_  gonna treat me like a charity case.” And because of car crash. A fucking car crashing. A fucking cliched car crash because some idiot couldn’t properly defrost the road. “Why can’t I just use that to my advantage?”

She switches lanes. “Because. That’s what _sociopaths_ do.”

Okay, fair.

“I just think I’m being pragmatic,” Ed says.

“And I think maybe that therapist had a point,” Izumi retorts.

Immediately, Ed’s face pinches into a scowl. The therapist she’s talking about is the one recommended by the hospital in the wake of the crash and met with him every Thursday while Al was comatose. At first, the man seemed nice, but it became apparent that his attempts to help were really just condescension and narcissism bound up under the guise of assistance. No one ever seems to believe him, though—and then the shrink had the nerve to say Ed has a deep-seated fear of being dependent on other people. Like, what kind of bullshit is  _that_?

He crosses his arms. “I am  _not_  a pathological liar.”

Fleetingly, her dark gaze flicks out to cast him a sidelong glance. “Maybe not yet, but you’re certainly shaping into one.”

“That’s  _not_  true!” There is a huge difference between embellishment and fabrication, thanks! ...and  _maybe_  he leans a little more towards the former, but only because he doesn’t want to tell people his life was derailed by a fucking  _car crash_. Like, is he also going to explain that apparently his life is run by lazy writers who want to use a conveniently overused plot device to orphan him and Al? No way!

“Between this and your temper—”

“ _What_  temper?!”

Just then, they approach a red light—the scarlet smacks against the windshield like a rotten tomato thrown in disdain for a terrible performance. Izumi pulls the car to a stop, then leans back. “May I remind you that you’ve been suspended three times last semester alone?”

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was—bad. He’ll admit that. But the fire alarm only rang because he was in a fight and someone shoved him into it, if they don’t want kids to get hurt in dodgeball then they really should ban it, and the hornets were already fairly agitated. In that order. He has a defense and is therefor not entirely culpable.

“Good thing I’m going to a different school in September,” Ed says, because there’s always a bright side.

Izumi, on the other hand, remains unconvinced. “Because you were  _expelled_.”

“That’s not  _my_  fault!” Asshole called him a midget. So what if Ed accidentally kicked him in the balls with his steel foot? Guy had it coming!

She exhales slowly, and the sound is one of exhaustion rather than outrage. “It never is, is it?”

Retorts die on his tongue. Ed closes his mouth. Looks away.

It’s not... It’s not like he doesn’t  _know_  that it isn’t normal to lose your temper so quickly. He does. He knows it’s impulsive and stupid, knows he isn’t doing himself or anyone else any favors by reacting like that. But that doesn’t  _help_. In the moments where he’s flooded with fire-white rage, the world narrows and consequences disappear and then when his head clears, the damage has already been done.

 _It’s not healthy_ , people say. Like he doesn’t know. Like “healthy” is how you’re supposed to be after your parents die in a fucking car crash.

...Mom would be so disappointed in him.

Green light flashes against the windshield. Izumi brings the car into motion again. Ed slumps against the seat.

“I’m worried about you,” she says after a minute, and his heart leaps to his throat because that’s probably the worst thing you can say to anyone ever, just shy of  _I hate you_. “I don’t... I don’t know anything about all of”—she makes a vague gesture with one hand, aiming out the window as though she’s explicitly trying to avoid offending Ed—“ _this_.”

“This” meaning—not “trauma”, because Ed is _not_ traumatized. And not by a stupid fucking cliched car crash, of all thing. “Troubled”, maybe, because that label has with an edge of danger that is in no way associated with unexplained panic attacks and bouts of anxiety and finding himself running his mouth for no reason but the desire to change the narrative into something he can control. So when she says “this”, she means troubled kids like Ed who have been recently orphaned and lose their tempers too often, throw punches like they’re going to make a career out of it, which will inevitably backfire on them.

But what else  _is_  there?

“I just...” She trails off. Which isn’t right. Izumi Curtis isn’t the sort of person who trails off uncertainly, who lets words hang there because they’re too hard to choke out. People like Izumi don’t hesitate or meander, don’t let themselves get caught into traps where the words end up trapping like tar pits and you end up sinking into the spaces of silence before you even realize just how dangerous it is.

He watches, somewhere between bewildered and touched by fear as she exhales through her nose. In that moment, she seems to sag beneath her own weight. And mighty Izumi Curtis strikes him as  _tired_.

“I don’t know how to help you,” she admits finally.

It feels like someone knocked the solidness out of Ed’s skeleton, and if he weren’t slumped against the back of the seat, then he would have fallen against it as the breath leaves his lungs. The logical part of him tries to point out that this isn’t a stamp of rejection, this isn’t her saying that he’s too broken to be put back together again—she’s not saying it’s not possible, just that she doesn’t know how. That someone else probably could.

Or maybe not. Maybe he’s shattered beyond repair. Maybe the impact of that damned truck in their car took more than just his leg and Al’s ability to talk and it actually hit something deep inside him that fractured into millions of pieces that simply can’t be recovered—

Shit. His hands curl into the fabric of his hoodie. The seatbelt is too tight.  _Shit_.

She must recognize the impending attack, because she glances at him. “Ed—”

“Can we just go home?” He hates that his voice shakes coming out.

A conflicted look crosses her face, and for a moment, he thinks she’s just going to pull over—which wouldn’t be any help at all, he doesn’t want to break down in a place where any old rando can walk by and see him descending into a surge of anxiety. And she seems to realize this, her expression hardening as she faces forward. The city blurs swiftly through the windows. She’s pushing the speed limit and the ache starting low in his port is grateful for it.

Soon enough, the edge of the old Twisted Midnight building comes into view. It now sports a cheery sign that marks it as Curtis Butchery, replacing the tarnished brass letters that once stood over the doors as a subtle bid for customers’ attention. The head of the third story—well, two stories crowned by an attic—attempts to stretch itself over the height of its neighbors, but at best it can only stands level. Still, his heart clutches at the sight of it, because even though it’s only been a scant eight months since they settled in, boards that crisscrossed the windows have been torn down and replaced by brightly-colored curtains and everything they have has been set up within it and it’s the closest thing Ed has to home at the moment.

Swiftly, the car turns into the street—one of two that bracket the structure and needed to cleaned out to make it more appealing—that reveals the snare of ivy on the side wall that has yet to be torn down. It blurs past before they emerge in a wide lot located at the back, the yellow lines which were probably meant to serve as parking spaces for the seedy customers of the original establishment now faded almost beyond recognition. A great brick wall rises up in the back to give the expanse of cracked concrete and its dominating greyness proper privacy. The emptiness now serves as a place for the delivery truck to reside in the spaces between its use, parked at a tilt due to the uneven ground. Ed is already unbuckling his seatbelt the moment they reach this private location.

He clamors free of the passenger seat just as Izumi pulls into a park. The lingering stench of garbage from a nearby dumpster hits the back of his throat with each breath, but it’s a reassurance nonetheless. Setting his hands on his knees seems to chase away the beginning prick of phantom pains. Just putting distance between himself and the car helps to calm the stuttering tide of irrational panic—thankfully, it doesn’t crest, doesn’t rise to swamp him like it used to. Even with the tightness in his throat and lungs, he doesn’t feel like it’s a struggle to breathe or that he needs to lunge into the safety of a secluded corner and wrap his arms around his knees and fight against tears.

 _I’m okay_ , he tells himself as he breathes. In. Out. In. Out. _I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay._

A car door closing sounds from behind him. Approaching footsteps. “Ed?”

“I’m okay,” he says aloud, and means it more than he has in a long time. There’s no sting of tears this time, but he wipes his eyes just in case. “I’m okay.” After a minute, he adds, mostly to Izumi, “Sorry.”

_Sorry I’m like this. Sorry my brain is so fucked up. Sorry you have to take care of us. Sorry I make you feel like you don’t know how to help. Sorry—_

“Don’t apologize.” He glances over his shoulder to see Izumi lingering at the hood of the car, one hand gripping absently at the strap of her purse. The look on her face is almost distress, almost helplessness, but he refuses to think that she would ever allow herself to admit such a thing. “ _This_ isn’t your fault.”

Ed doesn’t really know how to respond to that.

* * *

The sound of the back door opening and closing has Al glancing up from the book he was reading. In the area that used to be a kitchen—apparently pubs in this region are required to serve just as much food options as alcohol, so back when it was still an establishment serving alcohol there were cooks back here—has since been converted into a storage area with large freezers to contain the product not on display at the front desk but still ready to be sold. It’s a nice quiet place to settle into, and he sometimes helps Sig bring product out.

It also allows him to catch Brother and Izumi coming in from the back lot. There’s a subdued note about Brother that never bodes well, his hands shoved in his pockets while his shoulders hunch. Izumi exhales through her nostrils

“We’re home!” she announces, perhaps a little too loudly. Her voice is the kind that carries even without her having to raise it. But she’s probably just alerting Sig more than anything.

The fact that Brother only fleetingly acknowledges Al’s existence with a glance before looking away to stare at the wall is a bad sign. Al grabs his bookmark and shoves it between the pages. Something happened.

Well, obviously something happened. Izumi got a call that left her cursing afterwards, but wouldn’t tell Al what it was about while she hastened out the door. But something _happened_.

Sig pokes his head around the doorway. “How did it go?”

“Fine,” Izumi replies with a shrug that implies it really didn’t, but there isn’t a word in the Amestrian language for “it went about as well as it could have, considering the circumstances”. “Ed’s grounded.”

“ _Still_?” Brother squawks indignantly.

She looks at him she actually can’t believe he’d have the audacity to ask that. “ _Yes_ , still. You  _blew up a urinal_!”

Alarm smooths the curve from Al’s spine. Brother did  _what_.

A cross between a guilty wince and indignation nonverbally confirm this accusation, even before Brother starts to protest, “But I didn’t—”

“But  _nothing_!” she snaps in a tone that ignites the Fear of God. Appropriately, Brother draws back, not quite cowering—he won’t give her the satisfaction, yet, of cowering, but definitely more subdued than before. “Go to your room!”

No protests make themselves known. Instead, Ed turns on his heel and hurries out of the room, his head lowers like he intends to headbutt his way out. Luckily, Sig, brows raised in a curious manner that suggests he’s going to extract the story from his wife later, steps aside so that Brother meets no obstacles in his exit.

Obstacles, no. But a pursuer, yes. Al snaps his book closed to hasten after his brother.

Ed is nothing if not quick—he ascends the stairs in the storefront, hidden from customers by a door in the wall stamped with an “employees only” sign to keep strangers at bay. The heavy  _thunk_  of an automail foot adds an uneven punctuation to speedy footsteps. Footsteps which Al dogs, because Ed may be quick but Al is relentless. He shadows his brother as he quickens his way through the living room and down the hall and then Al catches the door to their room in his hand before Brother can slam it in his face.

“You  _blew up_  a urinal?” Al demands once they have the privacy of a whole floor to themselves. Though this selective mutism crap doesn’t work around Ed—not when it’s the two of them, one-on-one, slipping into the comfortable familiarity of someone you’ve known for your whole life—it’s still reassuring to know they won’t be overheard.

Again, Ed winces—actually, no, he _flinches_ , which is even _worse_. “That’s  _not_  what happened.”

Their shared room is a small space, one was clearly only ever meant for one occupant, but the idea of splitting them up into separate rooms was abhorrent so two smaller beds have been crammed into the square footage. Each one is pressed tight against the side wall, Brother’s on the right and Al’s on the left and differentiated by the fact that Al’s bedsheets are colored in sensible pastels to clash with Ed’s brand of bright-loud-flames-on-abyssal-black. A single nightstand acts as a barrier between the two frameless mattresses, squatting low to avoid offending the window that sits overhead and leads to a rusted fire escape. They share a closet located in the corner, right next to a desk that is jointly owned by the both of them, but it’s cramped and there’s little room for both of their clothes—the solution to this would, usually, be the wardrobe, but it currently sits as a silent sentinel out in the hall. And it will continue to remain there until they find the time to remove the as-of-yet untouched boxes of belongings that they took with them from Risembool, because anyone who thinks eight months is enough time to fully unpack has clearly never moved.

Frowning, Al sets his book down on the desk, right next to the boardgame he fished out from the attic. “Then what  _did_?”

Wordless, Brother sinks onto the edge of his bed. He opens his mouth—

“And tell me the  _truth_ ,” Al adds.

“I was gonna!” comes Ed’s indignant protest.

Al crosses his arms. Waits.

Rolling his eyes—Brother always seems so convinced that he needs to act more superior than he is, brushing aside anger-laced concern with a blasé attitude—he jabs his hands in the pockets of his hoodie. “I was at the bookstore and some jerk called me an ableist slur, so I punched him in the nose.”

While the knowledge that someone _actually_ had the nerve to say something like that to his brother has Al’s blood spiking with a surge of anger, immediate concern goes more to Ed’s recent and increasingly violent history. “ _Please_  tell me you didn’t break anything of his.”

“So anyway,” Brother goes on, which is  _not_  a denial, oh God, “my firecracker fell out of my pocket and the guy’s friend—”

“Fi—” Al stops. Blinks. The knot of his arms slowly comes loose as the pieces start to connect. “...you mean the ones we made in third grade?”

Whatever else Brother was going to say is absorbed by the silence. His face tightens, twists—the emotions that play across it are too multidimensional and complicated, too tangled up in one another, to even begin unknotting.

“Yeah,” he says, after a minute. It sounds like an admission of defeat.

Memory draws Al back through the years, to the third-grade science fair and a crazy, brilliant idea that seized Brother by the heart and then had Al drawn in because bright, shining things had a way of capturing your imagination. Homemade firecrackers. More fascinating than any paper mâché volcanoes or poster displays about solar power. More vigorous, too. Just understanding the chemical composition of gunpowder took rigorous research—which is another way of saying they snuck into Dad’s study when he was away with the intent to pilfer some of his chemistry books. Of course, they were always so careful about putting things back where they found them, not that Dad would have noticed with how scatter-brained he was, and keeping them hidden, because Mom  _would_  notice and Al could only imagine the amount of trouble they would get into for the theft.

Terror visited in the unforgettable moment when Dad caught them, red-handed, rifling through his more fascinating notes. To this day, Al still can’t believe that he actually stuttered out their intention to synthesize explosives. Out loud, it suddenly sounded very dangerous and maybe illegal.

Then surprise came—when Dad actually burst out laughing.

The next thing they knew, the father that was usually so preoccupied with work at the university and meetings and classes and his own research was helping them with their silly little third-grade science project. Enthusiastically teaching them about various elements on the periodic table, certain reactions between different chemical substances, pH levels and valence electrons and the laws of thermodynamics. It was the most animated Al ever remembers hearing Dad—after all, he was by nature a subdued and reticent man, but he came alive during that time. From him, they got the idea to make an alkali-based that would react to water, bound in a special paper that would keep small amounts of moisture out until it was ready to react. It was a brilliant idea and they adored it.

Mom helped them make a poster that broke down the complicated equations into layman’s terms, because she wasn’t scientifically minded but she had an aesthetic eye. She helped them space out the board and pick out the color schemes and set up a nice, appealing pattern with which they would arrange the paragraphs of text. Helped them pick a title. It wasn’t technical, but he remembers her grinning as she taught them just how much glue to put down so it wouldn’t soak through but also wouldn’t allow anything to fall off. In the end, she was the one who helped them actually make the firecrackers, wrapping the powdered solution in the paper, and then helping them brainstorm presentation ideas.

It was a silly little project, a silly little competition hosted in a silly elementary school that didn’t mean much, in the long run. But their entire family worked to make this a reality, all of it laughter and grinning and silly conversations hosted at hours that were just a little too late. And Al’s cheeks still hurt with the memory of how he  _grinned_  when they were presented with the first-place blue ribbon.

That ribbon ended up lost, somewhere. Misplaced amidst the clutter of everyday life. But it didn’t matter, because they had some leftovers of the firecrackers they made. That proved more than enough to remember it by.

Of course, over the years...

“Was.” Al is almost afraid to ask, but he _needs_ to know. “Was that the last one?”

Slowly, wordlessly, Brother’s shoulders hunch. He doesn’t meet Al’s gaze. “...yeah.”

“Oh,” Al says, because there’s really nothing else to say.

It’s fine. The memory is still there—the laughter, the warmth, rough fingers pointing to chemistry texts, smooth hands helping position cut-out construction paper, the sound of Mom teasing Dad lightheartedly and Dad pretending to be offended. That remains, even if they don’t have any tokens as physical evidence.

It’s—It’s enough. It’s  _enough_.

Al crosses his arms again. Or maybe he’s hugging himself. Sometimes he can’t tell the difference, especially when he’s freshly struck with the reality that they are _never_ going to see their parents again. “So what happened to the firecracker?”

It wouldn’t be accurate to say that Brother looks enthusiastic about the change in subject, but grateful is definitely up there. His features slip into a scowl. “Jerk chucked it into a backed-up urinal and it went off.”

Wait. Wait—Al very clearly remembers the power locked in those little capsules. Something that powerful would have—

“Is there anything left of the urinal?”

“...it  _wasn’t_  my fault,” Brother huffs, in lieu of a confirmation.

Oh God. Al can’t tell if that’s exasperation pinching at his temples or if there’s a migraine starting to encroach on his cranium. “How did they not call the police on you?”

Brother shifts his gaze off to the side, and worry pricks at Al’s sternum. That’s never a good sign. That is never, ever a good sign.

Suddenly, Al flashes back to Izumi hanging up the phone and muttering curses under her breath and a bubble of horror rises in his chest. “... _did_ they call the police on you?”

Rather than answer, Brother looks away, which is more damning than any verbal statement.

The bubble pops. “Were you  _arrested_?!”

“They didn’t press charges,” Brother objects, jabbing a finger out as though that will make his case.

“You—” Al takes a minute to just—try. Processing that. That his idiot of an older brother actually ended up in handcuffs and—nope. No, he can’t do that. His brain refuses to accept that concept.

Exasperation rises to act as a cushion between such a devastating image and his denial-ridden mind. Along with it comes a flash of outrage that burns bright and hot, because as much as he doesn’t want to believe that this actually happened for denial purposes, there is a level of incredulity that heats beneath the force of _anger_. Because only his dumb older brother could be so stupid, so reckless, so utterly idiotic—and then pretend it  _isn’t_  as big a deal as it is. Because Brother is a thick-headed numbskull who can’t seem to wrap his head around the fact that actions, even those that aren’t entirely thought through— _especially_  those that aren’t entirely thought through!—can have devastating consequences.

A growl rumbles low in Al’s throat as he runs his hands roughly over his face, through his hair. Part of him wants to rip the hair follicles right out, feel pain sear across his scalp, because nothing else but such pain could possibly match the intensity of the _aggravation_ that seizes him in a tight, crushing hold.

But beneath it all is weariness. A weight that has been aching in him for so long that Al has honestly just stopped noticing.

He  _groans_  into his palms. “I can’t  _believe_  you.”

“It’s not a big  _deal_ ,” Ed retorts, ever-so-predictable and unjustifiably indignant. As though he has any right to defend himself. “I just spent a couple hours in a holding cell. I’m fine.”

“Hold—” Honest to God, when Al lifts his face, he is struck with a primal urge to actually _throttle_ his brother. “You’re turning into a  _delinquent_!”

Giving another eyeroll, Ed bends forward to massage at his thigh. His port must be acting up. Still, the blasé look on his face only serves to rankle Al further. “Wow. Rude.”

“I’m serious!” Al snaps, because this isn’t something that can be brushed aside. This is real-world consequences. This is  _dangerous_. “Do you have _any_ idea what the teachers at school used to say about you, Brother? They called you a ‘problem child’.”

And it’s one thing, to hear whispers like that from other kids, who don’t know any better and make snap-judgements and will write Brother off. They don’t know him, so they don’t have a right to judge, and they can’t predict the future. But it’s another thing _entirely_ when a teacher—when someone who is supposed to be on your side, who is supposed to teach and help you learn, who has seen countless others before and is thus able to pick out patterns faster—says something like that. Especially when the tone is alternatively pity and not, when some express sympathy while others turn up their noses.

It’s never a good sign when an adult doesn’t think you’re worth helping. That’s never a good thing. It’s even worse when the teachers actually pulled Al aside and told him, not Brother, that Ed’s behavior needed to change and if they can’t convince him of this, then maybe Al can.

A lump rises in Al’s throat as he recalls the vice principal’s stern expression when this message was delivered. Remembers the sharp thorn of fear that embedded itself in his ribcage, because it must be serious if the vice principle herself came to talk to Al. “They thought you were going to end up in—in _prison_ or something!”

Unbothered, Ed just continues to massage his stump. “Didn’t the school year end in May?”

Frustration wells up, and it creates an ugly concoction with the worry-not-yet-fear already through Al’s veins. He stomps over. “The guidance counsellor told Izumi it would be a good idea to put you on medication.”

That gets Brother’s attention. He looks up, eyes slightly round, and Al thinks he’s finally getting through—

And then Brother’s eyes narrow skeptically. “...I’m pretty sure she can’t say that.”

Well, no. That’s not what guidance counsellors do. And Izumi reported the woman afterwards. But that’s not the  _point_.

“And what if a  _professional_  says it?” Al challenges.

Because—Because Al remembers the day he took the anti-anxiety meds the doctor prescribed and it was _awful_. There was no hunger, or exhaustion, or anything but this horrible numbness that crawled inside him and displaced his soul from his body and left the world to spin on around him. He’s almost grateful that Izumi stormed into the doctor’s office the next day, that she dropped the man as their practitioner when he tried to argue that the medicine was for Al’s own good, and then left the pill bottle on his desk.

There has been no medication since. No prescriptions. Nothing. Which is probably stupid, in hindsight, because not all medication does that—just the really strong stuff. And medicine is supposed to  _help_ , anyway, so of course not  _all_  of it is going to make you feel like you’d rather die than go through it again, because then you’d die feeling like yourself and not this  _zombie_.

Even if that’s the case... Even though the logical part of his brain says that not all medication does that, that some prescriptions help get people to normal and make them feel  _more_  like themselves—that fear still threatens to strangle him from the inside out.

And he  _doesn’t_  want Brother to go through that. It’d be like losing him, and Al—he just  _can’t_.

Brother grows somber, eyes darkening, finally seeming to understand the point Al is trying to get at. But then he shakes his head. “Sig and Izumi aren’t gonna follow up on it. I’m  _fine_.”

That—

Maybe that’s true. The incident was months ago, before they arrived in Dublith and settled amongst the folds of the city, and it’s the main reason why they haven’t consulted any other therapists and psychiatrists since. Sig and Izumi don’t want to put them through that, either of them. It scared them, too, when Al just _disappeared_.

But that’s not the  _point_.

“You’re  _not_  fine! You’re going around punching people and lying and  _blowing up urinals_ —” Brother opens his mouth to protest but Al won’t let him get a word in edgewise, because—

Because Brother never  _thinks_ , never pauses in consideration, always charges forward straight ahead without looking down or looking around or even stopping to assess the scenery and one of these days he’s going to run right off a cliff with nothing to catch him.

And then he’s going to be  _gone_  a-and... “I-If this keeps up—you could end up in  _juvie_  or a  _psych ward_  or something!”

Eyes flashing, Brother rises to his feet. “That’s  _not_  gonna happen!”

“Then you need to  _control_  your  _temper_!” Al snaps.

“And what do  _you_  think’s gonna happen if you don’t start _talking_?” Ed retorts fiercely.

Words abandon Al then.

He looks down. Bites his lip.

Yeah. The teachers said that too. They worry about him, about his future—they think he can’t hear them when he happens upon classrooms that they take refuge in to discuss personal matters or corners in the hall that he passes by. Thinks he doesn’t know that they hold furtive conversations about “those Elrics”, about “those kids who have such a tough road ahead of them”.

How else would he know that they think Brother is going to end up losing his temper around the wrong people and pay the price for it? How else would he know that they speculate on his condition, because he’s such a bright boy he’s not going to get anywhere unless he learns how to  _talk_?

Either way, they’ll be split up—Al in the loony bin and Brother in a jail cell and the thought of losing what little family he has left scares him beyond his wildest nightmares.

Belatedly, Brother seems to recognize the blow he struck, because the sigh he lets out is heavy with remorse and he sinks back down onto the mattress like his legs won’t hold him up anymore. “Shit.” He throws his hands over his face. “Sorry.”

Al knows that already. It’s not that—not that Brother ever _means_ to be hurtful. And if he does, it’s from some nasty impulse that he regrets almost immediately. Al knows his brother well enough that apologies can go unspoken.

Sighing, he crosses the distance, then sinks into the space at Ed’s right. His eyes sting, but he blinks it away, because he’s cried so much already and it makes Brother feel horrible and he doesn’t want to compound upon their already deep and brutal misery.

The walls are powder blue with placid clouds stirring whitely over the otherwise serene expanse. All it takes, though, is a gust of wind in the wrong direction and a shift in temperature to stir those clouds up into a violent storm. One that will rock the waters, turn the sea choppy and bitingly cold, have lightning flashing in the horizon that threatens to blind before being chased at its heels by an ominous rumble of thunder. Lashing rain, winds that tear roofs apart, flood the streets. Trapped. Stranded. Sitting in a corner as the world falls apart around you, trying desperately to hold onto what little peace you have.

There are no memories of the actual crash itself. Al suspects that Brother remembers, but he’s never said anything and Al would never, ever pry on such a matter. He honestly can’t decide, sometimes, which is worse—remembering the impact of the crash, the twisted steel and the smoldering wreckage and the pain that came from it, or to only recall being blissfully excited for the trip one moment before a hard transition thrusts you into a bereft reality.

Just then, Brother raises his arm, probably to ruffle Al’s hair like he used to when they were little. But Al’s bones suddenly get too tired of holding him up, and he lists to the side. His head ends up making impact with the crook of Brother’s shoulder.

Brother pauses for a moment. Then he lets his arm rest on Al’s shoulders. They don’t speak for a while.

“I miss them,” Al admits finally. There’s more he’s not saying—about how he misses Mom’s stew, her exasperated eyerolls coupled with teasing smiles, the way she ruffled their hair even though Brother complained that they were getting too old. He misses her as deeply and viscerally as you can miss a piece of your heart, or a limb, but the space aches far worse than any body part. But it’s not much of a confession, because Brother already knows that.

The weight of his chin settles on Al’s scalp. “I just miss Mom,” Brother says, almost flippantly.

“That’s not true.” Brother was always irritated by their father’s chronic distance from them, but Al knows him well enough to know that there was hurt underneath it. “You miss Dad too.”

“Do not,” Ed huffs, but it sounds like bravado.

“Do so.”

A quiet beat of silence passes between them. Al feels his brother shift.

“He didn’t care about us,” Ed whispers.

“Yes he did,” Al says. Because no one who didn’t care would have helped them with that silly third-grade science fair project. Maybe if he closes his eyes the memory will spring to life and play out beneath his eyelids—but when he does, only darkness greets him. “He just worked a lot. And he was trying to make up for it, too. That’s what the whole trip was about.”

A quiet scoff. “Fat lot of good it did us.”

“Don’t  _say_  that.”

No one could have known what was going to happen. They packed all their things up in the back of the car with a sunny, hopeful optimism. Mom spent the whole week humming with anticipation, swooning over the picturesque slopes of the mountains and how beautiful the snow would be, how romantic, how lovely. Brother grumbling quietly to Al that he really didn’t want to spend any personal time with “the bastard”, as he’d taken to calling Dad, but only once Mom was out of earshot. Dad himself was looking forward to the chance to reconnect with them, to mend the fraying distance before it was too late.

The ride up should have been uneventful. And it was, up until then. Mom and Dad were up front, conversing about what to do first while Al chimed in occasionally and Brother pretended to ignore them all with headphones. No one noticed the truck in the distance. It was in another lane. Everything was _normal_.

Normal.

Then—the hospital.

And a funeral Al slept through.

“So,” Brother says suddenly, tone forcibly bright. Al feels him shift again. “Did the exterminator find any bats?”

Al opens his eyes to scowl, remembering the conversation from earlier today. “No. Apparently the species I saw is from the Xingese jungle.”

“Really?” He glances up to see a less-forced intrigue in Brother’s eyes. “That’s cool.”

This, of course, coming from someone who wears gaudy red hoodies and has flame-ridden bedsheets. Al rolls his eyes. “The exterminator thought I must have been hallucinating on drugs or something.”

For a moment, Brother’s eyes flash with protective anger. But then he stops, frowns pensively. Then breaks into a wicked grin. “I bet the insulation is cocaine instead of asbestos.”

“It’s not.”

“It totally is.”

Geez. You’d almost think Brother  _wants_  this place to be a drug den. Al rolls his eyes, then jabs his sibling lightly in the ribs. “How was the jail cell?”

“Awful.” Brother retracts his arm, and Al pulls away. “On the bright side, I think I made friends with one of the cops. So... that’s a plus?”

If only Ed could make friends with people their own age. “You shouldn’t make friends with people who’re in law enforcement, Brother,” Al chides. Then, teasingly, he adds, “ _Especially_  if they end up arresting you later.”

Ed pulls a mock-offended look, gasping exaggeratedly as he throws a hand over his heart. “What, do you think I’m going to poison the neighbor’s dog or something?”

Still teasing, Al squints. “Would you?”

“Nah.” A devious grin spreads across Brother’s face. It looks like it belongs on a jack-o-lantern. “If I’m poisoning anything, it’s gonna be a  _cat_.”

“It is  _not_!” Al shoves him.

Laughter spills almost wantonly from Brother’s throat as he lets the playful force throw him back against the mattress. For a moment, he almost looks his own age—for a moment, it’s almost like before. “Is so!”

“Liar,” Al huffs, if only to keep from smiling and letting Ed win.

“M’not lying.” Brother makes a point of sounding offended. He cracks a smile that looks as fierce as it does bright. Al swears ten years’ worth of exhaustion just fell off him.

“Are so.” Sniffing, Al falls back against the mattress. The softness makes impact with his spine, and his weight causes the plushness to ripple. “I can  _tell_  when you’re lying.”

“Can not,” Brother retorts, which is such a lie that they both don’t even need to acknowledge it.

Above them, a plain white ceiling unfolds. The blankness of it reveals cracks in the plaster—subtle, relegated to the corners, yet breaking the otherwise flawless surface nonetheless. There’s a particularly big one, thin and more of a hairline fracture than anything but it’s long and takes up quite a bit of space, that spreads out directly above their heads.

Briefly, Al wonders if there’s anything in that crack. Anything lingering, existing. If something is looking down at them, these two golden boys who have lost so much and are trying to piece together some semblance of normalcy. He wonders.

“Do you think there’s an afterlife?” he asks, not sure if he’s directly the question into the silence or at his brother. He sniffs. “Do—Do you think they can  _see_  us?”

“It’d be a pretty shitty afterlife if all you can do is watch the people you left behind.” The end of Brother’s braid tickles his cheek. Ed only started growing his hair out after the incident and no matter how Al looks at it, it’s a change and a reminder that the old days are gone.

“Yeah.” Al swallows thickly. “I guess it would.”

* * *

Ed wakes to the sound of drums.

It’s just a tickle in the back of his mind, a distant staccato traveling a long way to meet the blur in his subconscious. Probably the product of some dream lingering on the edge between wakefulness and sleep. He grunts and tries his best to ignore it.

Then there’s a hand on his shoulder, and that’s less easily ignored. “Edward.”

A groan traps itself in Ed’s throat as he reluctantly cracks an eye open. Izumi’s face hovers over him, half-lit by early morning light. The drums stop—that is, if they were ever real in the first place.

“What?” he grumbles.

“Sig and I are going to run some errands,” she says. Softly, perhaps out of rare consideration for his groggy state. “I need you and Al to set up the shop in the meantime.”

“Okay.” He turns his face back into the warm softness of the pillow. Beautiful sleepy warmth. Yes, just pull him back under.

“I mean it.” Her stern tone needles at his subconscious and any drowsiness leaks out from the holes it pokes. “I need you two to sweep, set up the stock, and then _you_ need to clean the toilets.”

That rouses him, in a way only indignation can. “Why _me_?”

Through the blur of his vision, he sees her cross her arms. “Since you enjoy blowing up toilets so much, you get to scrub them down.” Before he can protest, or groan, she bends down to give him a light smack on the head, “Now up and at ‘em. Wake Al up, too, while you’re at it.”

Just then, Ed becomes aware of light breathing on his face, of the weight of an arm sprawled over his shoulders. He blinks sleepy wetness from his eyes and when his vision focuses, he finds that Al’s head is lolled across the pillow, sitting directly across from him. It doesn’t surprise him, really. Al’s bedsheets are starting to collect dust from their infrequent use, the two of them somehow managing to end up falling into a more or less restful sleep on the same mattress more often than not, even in spite of how little space there actually is. Between the two of them, there’s almost no room to move or shift or even roll over, packed together so tight that they can’t help but intersect.

Even without any psychiatrist or professional to tell him so, Ed knows this isn’t healthy behavior. They would probably have a more clinical term for it, probably call it a precursor to a dangerous codependency. All Ed knows is that it’s just one tick off a long, growing list that separates them from their old selves—before, they could barely share a room without fighting amicably, much less a bed.

Sometimes he misses the old Ed. But the old Ed would kick Al out, and sometimes Ed is grateful that he’s different now.

“And don’t try to foist any chores onto Al,” Izumi adds before she turns away. “Otherwise you’ll be cleaning toilets for a _month_.”

And on that note, the door closes softly to signal her departure. She must have parted the curtains, too, because the silky light of early morning streams in through the window with the clear intent to gently tease them both into wakefulness.

Grunting, Ed lets his head fall back against the pillow. There’s a yawn building in his throat, but he resolves to swallow it down, because he remembers reading an article or something that yawns are the body’s way of transition between awake and tired and he’d like to fall back asleep, thanks. Izumi can get mad at him later. Just five more minutes.

The drums start up again.

In the space between their cessation and their starting up again, they’ve gotten louder. Turned from a mere tickle to a rousing rumble. Ed scowls into the pillow. Didn’t he dream that?

...no. No, it’s coming from somewhere. Somewhere... near the closet.

Maybe there is still a bit of the old Ed left, because his first response is to kick Al lightly in the shin to wake him up. With the flesh foot, of course. “Al.”

All he gets for his trouble is a grunt.

Another prod. “Al. Get up.”

“No,” Al moans in protest.

Ed swears the drums are getting  _louder_. He uses the metal foot this time, even if he makes sure the jab isn’t overly forceful. “Did you change your ringtone?”

His brother’s eyelids scrunch, then one reluctantly cracks open. “...what?”

“Did you change your ringtone to weird tribal drums?” Ed reiterates.

“Drums...?” To this, Al rolls onto his back, then brings a hand up to stifle a cavernous yawn into his palm.

Which sucks, because yawns are contagious and the one that Ed has been fighting finally breaks free of his throat. More of the sleep-fog clears, bringing with it a rather irritating clarity, all sharp edges and focus that ultimately makes falling back asleep an impossibility. Great. There goes those five minutes.

Now that he’s more awake, he swears the drumming sounds more insistent.

At his side, Al suddenly bolts upright. “I heard those yesterday!”

“What?” Ed asks just as the mattress ripples with the loss of his brother’s weight. He sits up to see Al stumbling groggily across the floor over to the desk—the desk where Ed suddenly notices a flat-ish wooden box that he distinctly doesn’t remember being there a couple days ago.

As soon as Al approaches, though, the drumming grinds to a halt. The sudden silence seems too loud.

The automail knee gives a click as Ed rises to his feet, then ambles over to the desk himself. As he crosses the distance, Al scoops the box up with a thoughtful frown, which has Ed realizing that it’s not really a box at all. It’s a boardgame, one with wooden flaps that act as a cover which is wrought with jungle-themed imagery. Imagery which, Ed realizes once he’s close enough, is rather crude and betrays a certain datedness about it. This thing looks like a goddamn antique, like you should find it in the corner of some magical shop that won’t be there when you go back, coated in a faint layer of dust that you swipe away with your palm like every cliché weird thingy that’s going to turn the story protagonist’s life upside down.

“The hell is that?” Ed asks. He swears the reliefs of the animals and the hunter carved into the corners eye him, as though their gazes are alive and have the autonomy to stare at someone. It’s kinda... creepy, actually.

“A boardgame,” Al replies, stating the obvious. “I found it in the attic yesterday,” he adds, which is less obvious.

Ed frowns down at the gilt lettering on the cover, bisecting the imagery. “‘Jumanji’? What  _language_  is that?”

“Dunno. I couldn’t find anything online.”

His frown deepens. “And  _why_  did you bring it down from the attic?”

A shrug ripples through Al’s shoulders. “I heard drums, so I thought maybe it had a soundtrack or something that was malfunctioning. Figured we could, I dunno, fix it or something.”

Skepticism sours in Ed’s throat. Something this old doesn’t look like it would have a soundtrack—or anything electronic about it. Hell, the thing looks old enough to have been around before electricity was even  _discovered_. And if it were malfunctioning, then shouldn’t they have heard it sooner, rather then almost a year after they settled into the house? Not to mention it was only recently since Al even discovered the door to the attic at all...

“Let’s get dressed first,” Ed says. “And eat breakfast. M’starving.”

About an hour later, they’re in the living room, Al sitting on the couch with the game sitting directly in front of them on an old coffee table that came with the building and miraculously didn’t end up thrown out by Izumi’s aesthetic disapproval. Ed leans over the back of the couch—which is theirs, and much better than the beat-up old thing that was originally here—to observe. He’s in the process of finishing his third breakfast bar while Al is studying the game over a bowl of serial.

Pulling back the flaps unearths a rather simplistic board that is far less cluttered and illustrated than any childhood game of Candyland or anything else even remotely more modern than this dinosaur. A grand total of four winding paths start at each corner to form an almost purposeful knot around the polished jade crystal ball in the center, which the paths then feed into like a river into the ocean. Each one counts about thirty spaces, just from eyeballing them. Two are already occupied by pieces—or “tokens”, according to the alternatively black-red instructions that drape themselves over the inner flaps—which Ed initially tried to tug loose, only to find annoyance when they remained glued firmly to the board.

“Maybe there were other players before us,” Al suggests with a shrug, as though he can guess that Ed’s thoughts are turning back to how it just  _doesn’t make sense_  for those pieces to be so firmly affixed.

“Why leave them in, though?” Ed retorts. He pops the remains of the breakfast bar into his mouth, then rolls the wrapper into a ball that he tosses at the nearby garbage can. Luckily, it lands without bouncing off the rim, because Izumi’s anal about neatness.

Al’s spoon clinks as he sets it back in the now-emptied cereal bowl. He brings his knuckles to his bottom lip in a pensive gesture. “‘Jumanji’,” he reads, scanning the inner flap again. “‘A game for those who seek to find a way to leave the world behind’.”

“Yeah, I can read,” Ed retorts with an eyeroll. He rounds the couch to throw himself onto the cushion on his brother’s left. The impact of his weight causes Al to fumble with the bowl a little, then send him a look like it’s his fault.

There’s a compartment in one of the flaps that yielded a pair of bone-white dice, as well as two more tokens. These being a moss-green monkey with its limbs hugged close to its chest, as well as a jet-black alligator whose snout slopes at a sharp angle.

Ed reaches out to claim the alligator, because it frankly looks like the most badass of all the pieces. He kind of likes how it leers at him almost moodily, as though he’s wasting its time by just picking it up and examining it. Yeah, this definitely screams Ed.

“It’s kinda weird,” Al says, setting his bowl aside.

“Weird how?” Ed picks up the monkey, frowning at is parted mouth. It almost looks like it’s shouting. He tosses it to Al.

Who catches it quickly, now that his hands are unoccupied. He casts a mild glare in Ed’s direction anyway. “I dunno. Normal games don’t usually have just dice and pieces. They usually have—cards or something. At least a trap space.”

That’s true. The spaces lack writing or anything else to indicate there’s anything special about them. Ed shrugs. “Maybe there’s a compartment where the cards come out of.”

“Maybe,” Al mutters doubtfully. He hands his piece back over to Ed, then collects his bowl and rises to take it over to the kitchen, where he’s going to wash it out because again, Izumi is anal about cleanliness.

As the sound of the faucet running in the kitchen makes itself heard, Ed studies the pieces again. They’re not overly large, small enough to fit comfortably into children’s hands without any hassle but not so small that they would be an inconvenience—not like those itty-bitty plastic LIFE! pieces. God, those were hell. Even Monopoly uses small wedges of plastic that can get stuck anywhere if you aren’t careful, while these are large enough that it would dissuade a baby from putting it in their mouth and swallowing. Leave it to the old stuff to be less shitty.

Then he scoops up the dice. They  _are_  small, and they feel lighter than the kind of dice he’s used to. Then again, the dice he’s used to have twenty sides and are thrown on the table for the sake of fantasy campaigns. It’s been a while since he handled dice that aren’t specialized or custom-colored.

All of a sudden, there’s a twitch from the tokens in his hand. Ed stiffens as they suddenly bolt from his palm—and then affix themselves to the corners that mark the beginnings of the two unoccupied pathways.

His jaw loosens.

“Al,” Ed calls out, still staring at the board, “I think this thing has nanobots or something!”

Just then, the sound of the faucet running cuts off. Al’s voice drifts in from the kitchen with a chiding, “Nanobots are only in movies, Brother.”

“I’m serious,” he huffs as his brother returns to the living room.

Al’s brows pinch at the sight of the dice in Ed’s hand, and he lingers next to the couch, laying a hand on one of the armrests to steady himself as he leans over. A flicker of something passes through his gaze. “You’re not... gonna start  _playing_ , are you?”

That’s an odd tone to use. Ed arches a brow. “Well, why not?”

Something uneasy emerges on Al’s face as he settles back in his previous spot next to Ed. “Don’t we have chores?”

Just the memory of the unpleasant task Izumi settled him with has Ed’s nose wrinkling in disgust. Even if the toilets aren’t that bad, relatively clean from how infrequently they’re used by customers, the smell of the cleaning detergent still makes him nauseous without fail. Crazy woman probably knows it, too. “Yeah, but I don’t exactly want to spend all morning scrubbing toilets.”

Wry amusement momentarily displaces the unease. “Well, since you had so much fun blowing them up—”

“Shut  _up_.” Ed gives the dice an experimental shake. They click when they make contact with one another. Perfectly normal. “Look, I’m just gonna find out how this thing works and then we can shove it in the attic again.”

But Al frowns, and he reaches out to point to an inscription set on the top half of the flap that lacks the compartment. “‘Adventurers beware: Do not begin unless you intend to finish’.”

Figures that his little brother would have to be such a goody-two shoes.

“That’s just  _writing_ ,” Ed says to his brother’s disapproving look. Al’s always been a stickler, even for games. “What do you think’s gonna  _happen_?”

Of course, there’s a reason he’s always been a stickler—and the memory of why has Ed grinning.

Leaning forward, Ed sets his elbows on his thighs and cups his chin in his knuckles while drawing his mouth into a taunting pout. “D’aww, do you that the boardgame police are gonna show up and arrest me because I didn’t follow the rules?”

Al’s eyes narrow in a dangerous way that promises retribution later. “I was  _six_.”

Yeah, but he bawled like a baby when he accidentally skipped Mom’s turn in Clue. Sure, Ed got into lots of trouble for telling such horrible lies to his impressionable little brother, but it was  _worth_  it.

He straightens again and gives the dice a proper shake. “I’m just gonna find out what happens.”

“And  _I_  have a bad feeling about this,” Al retorts.

To which Ed casually tosses the dice onto the board. “Whoops!”

“ _Brother_!”

The dice still face-up on four and three. Seven.

When Ed reaches out with the intent to move his token, he’s more than a little surprised when it twitches into motion without his touching. It doesn’t so much spring forward as it does stretch into motion, slow and aching as though it’s been asleep for far too long and its body has forgotten what movement is.

“Oh.” He draws back as the alligator slides across the squares with an almost reptilian grace, counting exactly seven spaces before coming to a grinding halt. Just then, he can’t decide if his jaw being slack is from surprise or a budding sense of amazement. “ _That’s_ cool.”

But Al’s expression remains stubbornly disquieted. “It’s _creepy_.”

Movement catches Ed’s attention, draws his gaze to the center. He leans forward for a better look as the crystal ball in the center grows opaque with a living smoke. “Hey, check it out.”

Soon the entire crystal ball is swirling with this sentient cloud, thick and hunter green and filling to the brim without the threat of overflow. In the center of it, yellow-gold flickers into existence. Emerges from the fog to take the shape of smoky letters that look as though they’d dissipate if someone blew on them too hard.

**This will not be an easy mission,  
monkeys slow the expedition.**

It’s not a card coming out the side or a penalty or anything. It doesn’t even make  _sense_. Ed’s brows pinch. “The hell?”

As the letters fade, Al bites his lower lip and clasps his hands together, tight enough to squeeze. “I have a really bad feeling about this.”

An exasperated sigh leaves Ed and he turns to his brother. “ _Al_ , it’s  _just_  a—”

Something shatters down the hall. The chastisement fades on Ed’s tongue.

Eyes widening, Al whirls around to peer over the back of the couch. “...what was that?”

A clattering follows it, one that sounds like pots and pans crashing into one another, or at least into the floor. Alarm immediately propels them both onto their feet, with Ed’s prosthetic knee clicking loudly as though it senses the urgency of the situation. The sudden rush of running water acts as a precursor to a sudden clamoring that can only come from someone drumming wooden spoons relentlessly on steel pots. Joining it is a chorus of distinct shrieking noises that aren’t quite human, but certainly close to it, and seem to ring out as though for the sole intent to unnerve.

_Is that... coming from the kitchen?_

They exchange matching looks of unease. Al ends up following Ed as they hasten into the hallway—there’s nothing in the hall itself, no movement or strange sounds or evidence that anything has been disturbed. Their wardrobe is untouched, and the door to the guest room is ajar but when Ed peers into it briefly, he finds the room empty. On the other hand, through the kitchen doorway, he catches a blur of movement punctuated by an animalistic whoop, which just confirms that whatever chaos is going on is relegated to that area.

Something flies through the air. A small jolt of fear goes through him at the prospect of Izumi finding a giant mess and grounding them for twenty years. A smaller jolt of fear occurs when he realizes that this means some intruder has somehow gotten inside without their knowing.

Well. Izumi’s scarier. But still, that’s a pretty unnerving realization.

Seeming to realize that facing an unknown empty-handed is a shitty idea, Al meanders over to the broom closet. Probably in search of something that can properly fend off an attacker. He’s always been the more practical of the two, which Ed appreciates. In the meantime, Ed flattens himself against the wall, then takes a cautious glance around the edge of the doorway.

His jaw drops.

The lights are already on from their making themselves breakfast, which allows him to see them quite perfectly. All—twelve? it looks close to twelve, if Ed had to guess—of them.

Monkeys.

 _Monkeys_.

Spider monkeys, if Ed had to guess, though his expertise on the matter is limited severely to a fourth-grade field trip that led them through a variety of exhibits in which all the animals seemed more inclined to lazily bask in the sun rather than entertain impatient children. Not these specimens, though—they turn the kitchen into their personal playground, tearing open cabinets and looting the fridge and hanging from the ceiling light by opposable feet. Their hooting and screeching is either from delight or from a sheer wild urge to destroy, but either way it punctuates wantonly destructive actions like throwing produce violently across the tiles, or jumping on a chair so hard that the legs actually give out. The breakfast table has ended up flipped, the fruit bowl pilfered, refrigerator magnets strewn across the floor, curtains torn. Condiments paint the wall in vivid ketchup-mustard-mayonnaise streaks. Water is starting to spill out from the overflowing sink, the dishwasher torn open and gutted as the plastic racks have been taken out entirely. One cabinet door is hanging by just one hinge.

As he watches, one of them snags the fire extinguisher and then sprays gooey white foam all over the ceiling in sloppy, haphazard zigzags.

“What the  _fuck_?!” Ed hisses under his breath as Al darts over to flatten himself on the other side of the doorway, now sporting a large broom like a weapon.

When Al takes a peek around the corner for himself, a sharp squeak of alarm leaves him. This immediately has him throwing a hand over his mouth to contain the noise, but at the expense of dropping the broom—which clatters with a noticeable loudness to the floor, plastic meeting hardwood.

Their equally wide eyes meet as the clamoring in the kitchen suddenly quiets.

 _Please don’t have heard, please don’t have heard, please don’t have heard_ , Ed chants internally as he gulps and slowly, slowly, peers around the corner—

—and meets a dozen pairs of eyes trained directly on him. He could swear the mischief that gleams in their gazes is malevolent.

With a chorus of ear-splitting shrieks, they surge forward.

“Oh shit,  _run_!”

Shrieking primates burst forward from the kitchen as they race down the hall, their footsteps rapid in an attempt to put as much distance between themselves and these wild animals as they can. Ed isn’t even sure what the monkeys will do if they catch them—if he and Al will be lightly mauled, or just made into comical playthings with fruit shoved up their noses as they end up gagged and bound—but there’s a sneaking suspicion laced in adrenaline that says he definitely doesn’t want to find out. In no time, they manage to make it to the living room, where the staircase leading down to the shop proper stretches wide arms out to welcome them, cloak them in its offer of sanctuary.

But at the last minute, Al backpedals. He whirls around and bolts over to the coffee table.

“What are you doing?!” Ed demands from where he’s stopped at the top of the staircase.

His brother doesn’t heed him—instead he grabs hold of the damn boardgame, hastily closing up the flaps, just as the first monkey explodes through the doorway. Its mouth is parted in a feral scream, revealing enormous yellow teeth that should not be in the mouth of an herbivore, _goddamn_. What would a monkey _possibly_ use teeth like _that_ for?!

More of them are quick to flood the living room. Al gives a sharp yelp and then takes off running in Ed’s direction. The couch is immediately seized, cushions thrown into the air and leather surface shredded by surprisingly long nails. A tall lamp is knocked on its side, the lampshade torn off while the lightbulb itself shatters against the floor with a blinding spark of misfiring electrons. If there’s more chaos, Ed doesn’t stick around to watch, turning away to hastily descend the staircase at his brother’s side.

Squealing chases at their heels, the loud slam of loping footsteps hot on their trail like a miniature stampede, like a rumble thunder threatening to sweep them up in its bedlam. All too suddenly—or perhaps it’s adrenaline and its tendency to condense time—the steepness of steps gives way to flat ground, to recently-waxed linoleum tiles that make up the shop floor. While Al keeps running, Ed pivots sharply on his heel.

He catches a fleeting glimpse of crazed primate expressions, of wild eyes and screaming mouths lined with enormous teeth that could easily snap bones in their jaws and spindly hands tipped with too-long fingernails, just as he grabs the door and  _slams_  it closed.

Just as he’s about to click the lock into place and relegate the animals to the top floor, though, they surge forward again and the door burst open beneath their force. As cream leaves him, has him stumbling wildly backwards with his arms windmilling in an attempt to retain balance.

A handful of monkeys claw their way through the doorframe in a coltish tangle of limbs, in flailing hands and twisting tails and incoherent screeching. One thing that’s always been overplayed in the media is how silly monkeys are, how cute and friendly, with cartoons centering around playful antics and hands slapping thighs and laughter smelling of bananas. Very rarely do they speak of the teeth set in screaming jaws or how terrifying it is to find yourself suddenly confronted by a horde of human-not-human faces. Very rarely do they say anything about how it looks like a scene from your worst nightmares given life. Very rarely do they describe how your too-short life flashes lightning-quick before your eyes in the moment you look and see this writhing mass of crazed primates that will probably gut you and spread your entrails all over for in a frenzied fit.

Terror seizes Ed wholly in that moment, and normally that would spell the end. But then there’s a hand on his wrist, and Al—his sweet, glorious little brother, Ed is _never_ going to tease him ever again—is tugging him into the backroom just as the horde floods the shop. The glass counter that would hold meat products on display is shattered beneath wanton fists, screech shapes bouncing across the tiles like they don’t know the meaning of “stillness”, and there’s something thrown against the front doors.

Then the door to the backroom is slamming shut. This time they manage to get the lock in place just as a ferocious pounding wracks the door itself. Ed stumbles back, eyes wide, as screeching echoes from beyond.

It sounds like the way hell might if it were trying to break the door down, if it were trying to crack the earth open and reach out to snag your soul in gnarled fingers. His heart threatens to burst out his chest as he searches the backroom desperately for cover, for a place to hide and to shield them in the event that those  _things_  actually do managed to get inside. But there’s nothing, nothing that would welcome them into its cramped corners yet be able to keep the wrath of those things that are  _not_  monkeys, monkeys _don’t fucking act_ _like that_ , at bay.

Luckily, the pounding fades, even as the sounds of pandemonium do not. The screeching and shattering of glass continues even as Ed tries desperately swallow breath into his lungs.

The strength leaves him then, replaced by a relief so fragile and bendable that it has his skeleton wilting and giving up entirely on the premise of holding him upright. He throws a hand out against the wall to keep from collapsing against it, and then sliding boneless to the ground in a mess of quivering limbs and ragged panting. There’s a low ache coiling deep in his port as a reminder that this isn’t the first time he’s been in a situation where adrenaline raged through him, where his life flashed before his eyes.

To be honest, he’d take a car crash over being mauled by rabid primates any day. Screw clichés, at least no one’s going to laugh at his funeral if they see  _Died in a car crash_  carved on his headstone.  _Killed by crazed monkey horde_ , on the other hand, sounds infinitely more comedic.

A clatter of wood makes Ed jump, nearly flying right out of his skin to bang his skull against the ceiling. He glances wildly over his shoulder just in time to see Al sinking to his knees, his back leaning heavily against a crate while he tries to catch his breath. Horror paints itself starkly on his features, eyes so wide Ed wouldn’t be surprised if they just fell right out of his head. There’s a hand fisting his hair over his right temple, the other spread flat and firm over his heart as though to keep it contained within the walls of his sternum.

On the ground, somewhere at his feet, the boardgame is folded up. Daylight streams in from thin windows placed high overhead, pale autumn sun stretching out to trace its fingers across the textured ridges of the illustration, catching the glimmer of letters scrawled across the surface.

Rage flashes through Ed’s gut, and he finds it in him to straighten a little as he turns around, still panting. “Why did you grab the  _game_  and not a goddamn  _cell phone_?”

That rouses Al back to the present, has him straightening like someone jabbed a taser into his thigh. His wide eyes dart over to where the boardgame sits deathly still—then he lunges for it with such a suddenness that Ed once again nearly leaps free of his skin.

“What are you  _doing_?” Ed demands as his brother tears open the flaps. The four tokens haven’t twitched or moved or even given any indication of having been violently jostled around in a haste to escape killer primates. They just stand there like sentinels, set silent on each of their own winding roads. In the center, the green crystal ball seems like a bulbous eye.

Ignoring him, Al scrambles to get the dice in his hand. “We need to finish.”

“We need to call  _animal control_.”

“And tell them  _what_ , Brother?” Al demands, springing to his feet. “That you summoned a bunch of crazed monkeys from a magical boardgame?!”

“The  _hell_  are you talking about?” Ed retorts, throwing his arms up. “I didn’t  _summon_  anything!”

“‘Monkeys slow the expedition’!” Al makes a wild, flailing gesture towards the door with the fist gripping the dice. “Now there are monkeys  _in our kitchen_!”

Either on cue or by pure coincidence, glass shatters loudly beyond the door. Loud enough to make Ed wince. Oh, Izumi is going to  _kill_  them when she comes back—and not even Sig is going to be able to cull her wrath.

Okay, there’s no denying the weird as fuck timing, sure, but—that doesn’t  _prove_  anything. And there sure as hell isn’t any such thing as  _magic_. “Just because it rhymes doesn’t mean I fucking _summoned_ anything!”

With a growl, Al drops to his knees and then jabs insistently, repeatedly, at one of the inner flaps. His fingertip starts to lose color from how insistently it presses into the wood. “‘The exciting consequences of the game will vanish only when a player has reached Jumanji and called out its name’.” Using his free arm, he scoops it up, rising to his feet while cradling it as though it were an infant. Or demonspawn masquerading as an infant. Whatever. Either way, Al’s jaw sets with something like grim determination as he gives the dice in his hand a shake. “I guess that means if we finish, they’ll just—go away or something.”

“Are you  _crazy_? We need to—”

Heedless, Al throws the dice onto the board. They clatter as they land.

“ _Al_!”

Despite himself, Ed draws closer as the green monkey token starts sliding forward. He catches a glimpse of the dice where they landed against the wooden rim, sitting face-up with two sixes staring up at the ceiling—twelve, a good roll if the circumstances were less steeped in potentially homicidal primates.

Once the token stops, though, mist starts to swirl in the center again. Apprehension suddenly tickles at the back of Ed’s throat as it starts to eclipse the clear emerald surface with its own malachite smog. Letters start to wink into existence, tremulous and vaporous and unsteady as they form gaseous shapes. Gaseous words. Gaseous sentences. A cryptic poem that bids the hairs on the back of his neck to rise in a way they didn’t before—or maybe he just didn’t notice, caught in his own careless amusement.

**A tiny bite can make you itch,  
make you sneeze, make you twitch.**

A wince scrunches Al’s features. “Ohhhh, I don’t like the sound of that.”

To which Ed scoffs, trying to smother his own growing apprehension. “For the _last_ time, it’s  _not_  a magic—”

The light wavers suddenly, as though something has passed over the window. Frowning, he glances over Al’s head, at the narrow windows set so high that even Sig can’t reach them without a stool.

And his eyes widen. “Holy shit.”

Bewildered, and wary, Al glances over his shoulder to follow Ed’s gaze. The color is quick to drain from his complexion as he lays eyes upon the thing that Ed sees.

For the record, Ed has never had anything against bugs. He used to go digging around in the garden when he was little and collect beetles that he proudly presented to Mom, even when they made her scream. And he still doesn’t dislike them. But the thing that has landed on the glass of the window is the size and length of his foot, maybe larger, and is abso-fucking-lutely terrifying. Its long body is almost primarily black, or at least very darkly-colored, with no distinctive markings to make it explicitly memorable beyond its nonsensically massive size. It stands on long, spindly legs each about the length of his hand, with a pair of clear, twitching wings on its back and a needle jutting out from its face that’s as long as Ed’s forefinger.

Slowly, Al closes the game up again, the wooden click of the flaps meeting the board somehow louder than it’s ever been. His throat bobs as he swallows. “ _What_  was that about it not being a magic boardgame?”

“That’s a coincidence,” Ed says faintly, but the words feel hollow and insubstantial. He’s having trouble keep his jaw from dropping.

“T-That’s a  _giant mosquito_ , actually.”

Whatever retort Ed has on his tongue evaporates when the mosquito arches its head back and then takes a sharp jab at the window. He thinks his heart might just fly out of his chest when it repeats the action and a small, hairline fracture appears on the glass.

“Go,” Ed says, and this time he’s the one to snag his brother, grabbing him by the shoulder and then shoving him towards the door. “Go go go go!”

They undo the lock and then burst out into the store proper and slam the door behind them, pressing their backs against it just in case the massive thing decides to come after them. But instead, Ed is treated to the memory of why they retreated into the backroom in the first place—along with the crushing horror of realizing that Izumi is going to skin them, gut them, and then hang them on her mantle place.

Chaos reigns. Shattered glass glitters all across the tiles, both from where the display glass for product has been reduced to pieces and where the windows of the storefront were absolutely decimated—and in that moment, Ed is very grateful for the fact that he and Al are both already wearing shoes. Only a few jutting shards hang in the frames of both the windows and the case, like the deadly-sharp fangs in the maw of some ancient monster. One of the light fixtures looks like a primate fist was thrust into it, exposing the long and narrow bulbs that make up the artificial lighting, leaving it to flicker between grey and milky yellow. The door leading upstairs is hanging haphazardly on one hinge, threatening to succumb to gravity at any moment. On the counter, the cash register has been knocked to the ground, its drawers thrust out as though trying to defend itself from attack, but it ended up just spilling out coin and bills. A few shredded bills actually join the mess of broken glass all over the floor, stirring in the faint breeze that comes through the front door, which has been all but busted open with a large crack causing it to bow in faintly at a horizontal line. Water spills in a growing puddle of shining wetness from where the bathroom door in the corner is squealing as it slowly closes, but Ed somehow doubts the wooden barrier will prove enough to contain the growing flood.

Beside him, Al throws a hand over his mouth as he observes the carnage with wide eyes. Ed resists the urge to sink to his knees and weep in utter despair. Of all the ways to die, this has to be the worst, even taking into account the utter ridiculous of being monkey-mauled or the cliché of a car crash. Goddamn.

“So,” Al begins, tentatively, voice high and pitchy from evidently imagining the same grim end as Ed, “at least they’re gone. That’s—That’s good, right?”

Unfortunately, there’s a scream from upstairs, which has terror pounding through Ed’s veins anew. Wild, animalistic footsteps slap at the stairs.

In the corner of his eye, Ed notices the silvery gleam of the freezer’s reinforced door. It sits in the very back of the store, where rumor has it Twisted Midnight hosted its illicit activities. But the thick titanium is only faintly scuffed rather than dented or damaged beyond repair.

“Freezer!” Ed shouts, reaching out to snag his brother’s hand.

The sea of shattered glass passes beneath their running footsteps just as another crazed monkey explodes from behind the staircase door, its howling mouth smeared with what Ed  _desperately_  hopes is just ketchup and swinging Al’s discarded broom like a madman. It must spy them, because it’s frenzied screeching reaches a new pitch and then suddenly Ed gets the distinct sensation that it’s chasing them.

Hastily, Al undoes the lock, to which Ed then reaches out to  _wrench_  the door open. It gives away with a stubborn squeal of protest, its solid metal weight straining the muscles in Ed’s thirteen-year-old arms, but the crack that parts from the doorframe lets out a sweet cloudy puff of cold that may as well have been a benediction. Without any further prompting, Al ducks into the gelid darkness, and Ed follows soon after. He gets a good view of the monkey throwing the broom back over its head as though preparing to strike before he lets the door go, its weight causing it to slam snuggly into place.

There’s a bang against the door that causes them to flinch, then frustrated shrieking. Then hooting, hollowed by the shuffling of glass shards. Then quiet.

Again, Ed goes nearly boneless with relief. But this time his panting is accompanied by an aching cold, by a freezing that stabs deep into his lungs and carves feeling out of his skin and turns his exhales into crystal. It sinks into his port like the tearing fangs of a predator, biting deep into the flesh, eliciting a low and baying throb through his muscles and blood. When he leans a hand against the door, his fingers threaten to go numb.

Somewhere on the wall, there’s a light switch, one that will cause the old halogen lighting system to stutter to life and bathe the entire area in a sickly creamy glow. As it is, the darkness is crisp in its gelidness, shadows outlining the dark shapes of stripped animal corpses that hang from the ceiling by heavy stainless-steel hooks and chains. In any other circumstances, Ed might have been able to stomach the raw, exposed muscle tissue by virtue of having grown used to it over the months of working in the freezer and helping the Curtises with their shop in his spare time. But adrenaline has weakened his stomach and he feels like his knees are going to just give out and the sight of anything too grotesque might have bile leaping to his throat to join his aching pulse. He hangs his head and struggles for breath, to calm the roar of blood in his ears.

Okay. Okay. Homicidal monkeys. Giant mosquitoes. The shop is trashed. They’re trapped in the freezer. And they don’t have their phones on them. Shit. They can’t even call Izumi so that she can kill them.

Al seems to recover sooner than Ed does—which Ed chalks up to the fact that Al isn’t lugging around ten excess pounds of steel and wires—and throws the game’s flaps open again. Still, the tokens remain eerily undisturbed. In the murk, Ed almost mistakes them for looking pleased.

His brother snaps up the dice, which  _have_  been jostled, and then shoves them over to Ed. “ _Here_.”

“What do you mean ‘here’?” Ed all but shrieks, eyeing the dice warily. He still doesn’t believe in magical boardgames, because there’s  _no such thing as magic_ —but even he can’t deny the correlation between the cryptic messages that show up with each roll and the jungle-based dangers manifesting from thin air. “I’m _not_ touching those!”

In the darkness, Al’s green-gold eyes flash. “ _You_  started this, we need to  _finish_ , and it’s  _your turn_.”

“No it’s not.”

“Yes it is!”

“You rolled a twelve.” Ed jabs a finger at the inner flap, just like Al’s been doing the whole time. He can’t tell if he points at the exact relevant passage, but it’s the presentation that matters more than the substance. And he read the instructions too. “Doubles gets an extra turn.”

Almost immediately, the fierceness drops into dismay. “Are you kidding?”

Ed arches a brow in a silent challenge. It would probably be more effective if his breaths weren’t rasping and his mouth wasn’t turning numb from the cold. And his teeth hurt. Why the fuck are there nerves in your teeth that can sense temperature again? They’re starting to fucking chatter, too.

Giving a little groan Al brings his arm closer to him. Little shivers are starting to rack his breathing as he gives his fist a stern shake, then lets the dice fall against the board. Ed wonders if they’ve always been that loud, if the sound of them landing has always been deafening enough to fill the air, or if it’s just the sense of urgency that his stupid brain has decided to attach to it. Just like how his pulse isn’t usually just this loud or prominent or thunderous, but at the moment it threatens to burst out of his eardrums.

It’s hard to tell exactly, but Ed thinks the dice might land on a five and three. Eight.

Al’s token groans forward, as though protesting the fact that it’s now twenty spaces into the path so early in the game. And hey, if this really does all go away when they finish the game—though Ed is still skeptical—and Al keeps rolling high numbers, then they might actually be able to get this all over quickly.

“Okay.” Al clenches his teeth, although if this is from anticipation or an attempt to steel himself against the biting cold, Ed doesn’t know. “P-Please be something friendly.”

Once it stops, the center immediately stirs to life. A faint lambent actually stutters into existence, casting an eerie green radiance through the hazy swirl that churns within the crystal ball. Goosebumps emerge on Ed’s arms as letters once again surface from the fog, though he’s more willing to blame the chill for that than any sense of anxiety or fear or alarm that jolts so strongly through his being that his bones crack.

**His fangs are sharp. He likes your taste.  
Your party better move post haste.**

“Gee,” Ed drawls, somewhere between hysteric and sarcastic, if there even is a difference at all, “that sure s-sounds nice and friendly.”

When Al looks up, his gaze is glassy with fear. The kind of primal fear you see in children who have just snuck into a horror movie and witnessed blood and gore splash across walls. “What do you t-think it means?”

“How am I s-supposed to—” Ed is cut off mid-sentence by a low rumble in the distance. Slowly, oh so slowly, he glances out into the murky sea of inert corpses, the frozen sacks of muscle tissue that hang from the ceiling.

A dark shape moves among them. Living, predatory, a low whine reverberating through his skeleton.

“Al,” he says, carefully, oh so carefully. His teeth are still chattering. “C-Close up the game.”

Al looks up sharply. “What?”

As if on cue, a pair of saffron eyes flash into view, slicing through the blackness with the ease of a warm knife through butter. Slowly but surely, shadows congeal into a hazy silhouette, with hunched shoulders and thick, sturdy legs that could put birch trees to shame and rises up to achieve a height that is at least twice Ed’s.

The hulking shape brushes past the limp, hanging meat with nothing but an apathetic flick of a long, wiry tail that sways past its hindquarters. A low growl rumbles in its throat that brings Ed back to nature documentaries about southern sundrenched grasslands and thick, voluminous manes that crown what people have taken to calling “the king of the jungle” despite the fact that it doesn’t live in jungles at all. It seems even this dumb boardgame didn’t get the message about correct natural habitats, because when the thing in the darkness parts its mouth very faintly, letting out heavy, panting breaths crystalize into silver-white puffs, Ed can faintly make out the gleam of long, carnivorous fangs tinged faintly yellow as they jut out from black gums.

“Shit.” Ed is somewhere between screaming and passing out and breaking down sobbing, but he jolts into motion regardless, hastily scrabbling at the door handle. “Shit shit shit shit  _shit_!”

Luckily, the door yields to him, and he manages to push it open just as the thing lets out a blood-curdling roar. They’re able to tumble out of the freezer just as it lunges—then slams the door closed behind them before it can crush them beneath massive paws.

The ensuing roar of fury—fury at having been thwarted, at having been trapped—threatens to burst Ed’s eardrums even through a solid half-foot of reinforced titanium. A clamor of claws screeching against metal joins snarling that promises violent retribution in the near future. For one terrible moment, the door shudders, and Ed actually fears that the beast will manage to break it down through might alone.

Wild with fright, Ed presses his full weight against the door while Al hastens to get the lock in place before the damn thing—the  _motherfucking lion_ —can force its way free.

“Only  _you_  could summon a  _giant cat_!” Ed screams, half furious and half terrified, as the door jerks again.

“Well I’m  _sorry_!” Al screams back, half indignant and half terrified himself, and secures the lock with a click.

Irate snarling continues to fill the store. But when the door bangs and jerks, the lock remains firm, rattling even as it stubbornly refuses to yield to such a massive show of strength. Hesitantly, Ed takes a step back. Al does too. Another step back. Two more, three, until they’ve more or less reached the middle of the store where shattered glass glitters in the daylight across the tile floor and crunches beneath their sneakers.

There’s a lion in the freezer.

 _There’s a lion in the freezer_.

Holy shit on a stick,  _how is this happening?!_

And just when Ed thinks he’s going to have a breakdown—he can feel it coming, feel the swelling tide of panic threatening to swamp him whole—there’s a crash from upstairs. At his side, Al goes stock still, clutching the damnable boardgame over his chest like an invaluable shield keeping his heart from leaping headlong out of his ribs.

“What was that?” Al asks, but it comes out in a whimper.

A loud, drawn-out shout answers—or a roar, maybe. Something primal and chilling. And it doesn’t sound like any animal Ed has ever heard.

Whatever it is, it sends adrenaline bursting anew through Ed’s blood and he snags Al by the wrist again. With the freezer now currently off-limits by virtue of the predatory big cat taking residence in its freezing darkness, the only option they have is to once again duck for cover in the backroom—

Except, when Ed reaches the door, he’s met with a conspicuous buzzing that sounds distinctly disconcerting and he’s suddenly reminded quite vividly of the giant insect that could break windows with its proboscis.

Shit. Ed looks around wildly. Shit. Where do they go. Where—

Al grabs his wrist and uses the boardgame to gesture fiercely. “Counter!”

Indeed, the counter is still standing, even though the cash register has been toppled and the display case shattered and the surface cracked, but it remains as solid as ever. They hasten into the safety of its shadow just as the chaos starts descending the stairway. And when they curl up, flatten themselves against the floor to remain as hidden as possible, pandemonium swallows the store anew.

Monkeys screech wildly at the top of their lungs, but this pitch strikes Ed as more furious and outraged than frenzied, and it isn’t followed by any telltale crash of utter destruction. Accompanying their chorus of primal shrieking is a faintly familiar sound—a pressurized pneumatic hiss that reminds Ed of the time Hohenheim had to bust out the fire extinguisher to keep the kitchen fire he started from consuming the whole house. In fact, when he dares to peer up through the veil of his bangs, he makes out a wide streak of smoky white foam that sprays across the air in a wild, uncontained arc. Like whoever is wielding the device has never used one before, allowing its power to form a directionless onslaught that is meant, more than anything, to be an intimidation tactic.

He almost thinks it’s another monkey, remembering the white foam that flew around the kitchen and has now likely been turned on its fellows. But then, rising to eclipse everything, is a single roaring cry—

“GEEEEEEEEEEET  _OUT_!”

Ed’s heart stops and at his side, Al’s breath hitches.  _A... A person?!_

“This is  _my_  house you damn, dirty apes!  _You hear me_?” Another hissing spray that has the monkeys shrieking their protests. “ _MINE_!”

Clattering. Squealing. Retreating. Ed’s jaw falls loose.

Heart in his throat, he glances over at Al, sees his own fear reflected back at him as this wild and unimaginable force that has seized every bone in his body and sunk claws into his soul. Because the monkeys may be gone, but they don’t know what this means. Someone else is in their house—someone else whose footsteps came racing down the stairs from the second level where no one was before, took hold of the fire extinguisher, and they don’t know for certain that’s the only thing this person has on hand.

For all they know, this potential-savior could be wielding a knife or a sword with which to gut them like pot-bellied pigs, could be a cannibal emerged for the sole purpose of devouring them just like the lion. Or, hell, feed them to lion. There’s so many things to consider, so many possibilities flashing through his head that Ed is nearly dizzy with it, struggling to make sense of the whirl of his thoughts so he can come up with a possible and plausible counter-attack. Something that will get them the hell out of here, to safety and security.

Hell, Ed didn’t even know he could think like this, his mind racing and amped by fear rather than stalled by it. This must be the survival instinct so many nature-people talk about, when you’re scared out of your mind and the fear doesn’t shut you down but instead wakes you up and surges through you like a weapon in and of itself. His breathing his sharp, pulse blaring in his ears, hands shaking and sweat pricking his palms but he feels like he could run twenty miles without being tired out if that’s what it came down to.

Beside him, the glossiness in Al’s eyes speaks to a very different fear. The kind that seeps in and erodes you from the inside out at a startling pace and leaves you a quivering mess. He’s crouched down, same as Ed, his body arched over the boardgame, which rests beneath his belly. To an onlooker, it looks almost like the fetal position.

Shit.

Ed reaches out to find his brother’s hand—which darts out from underneath Al’s chest enough speed to make it blur. It grasps his with a biting grip, clinging so tight Ed thinks he might just cut off the circulation. Sweaty palm against sweaty palm, fingers tangling. Ed returns the grip with his own comforting squeeze, something that provide a silent reassurance and hopefully cut through the haze of terror that has seized Al so.

 _Don’t worry_ , he tries to say without words.  _Don’t worry, I’ll protect you. Nothing’s going to happen to you._

Then he hastily detangles their fingers, and reclaims his hand.

Gathering his nerve, and a deep breath, Ed slowly uncoils his legs from beneath him. His port flares with pain as a reminder of the previous abuse, but he tries not to mind it. He sits up, sits back on the balls of his feet, hooks his fingers on the lip of the countertop—and then slowly peeks over the edge.

Standing in the center of the shop, the fire extinguisher dangling limp and luridly crimson from his hand, is what appears to be a man. His back is to Ed, revealing the broad expanse of shoulders and the length of a spine and old, faded scars that dance around beneath a thick layer of muddy filth. No face though, or at least none that Ed can see from this vantage point. Sprouting from his head is a matter heap of dark hair that forms a veritable mane, though it’s hard to tell if black is the natural color or if it’s just so dirty that the original color is lost beneath muck. Seriously, the man looks like he hasn’t taken a bath or shit in half a century, the way grime has accrued itself upon every inch of his skin. Which Ed can see very clearly on account of the fact that this dirt-caked stranger standing in the shop isn’t wearing a stitch of clothing, save for a crude loincloth composed entirely of broad banana leaves and a fraying piece of twine.

Somehow, more than the fact that there’s a Tarzan knockoff standing there panting from exertion, Ed finds himself utterly terrified that string will give out. Shuddering, he drops back down.

But seriously, the fear has settled to a more acute sensation. One that pricks at his awareness without completely subsuming it, sharpening his senses rather than dulling them. There’s a stranger in the shop, literal feet in front of them, separated only by the solidness of the counter. And let’s face it—getting hit on the head with a fire extinguisher is going to incapacitate you pretty quickly.

Okay. Okay. Let’s—let’s presume there  _is_  some causation between the boardgame’s mysterious messages and the random manifestations. Ed doesn’t remember either of them rolling and getting a response something like  _Appearing will be a half-naked_ _jungle-man, greatly resembling Tarzan_. Like, shit, no. He doesn’t remember anything like that.

Wetting his lips, he turns to Al, who looks ready to either start crying or screaming or just fleeing out the door at the first sign of danger. “Did you read anything about a jungle-man?” Ed whispers, as low as he can manage to avoid being heard.

A whimper builds and breaks in Al’s throat. He shakes his head wildly.

Fuck. Ed reaches out again, and Al once again clamps on with a violent ferocity. He squeezes back as best he can without it hurting, because  _it’s okay, it’s okay, I’m here and I won’t let anything happened, I’m **here**._

Shuffling footsteps. The hairs on the back of Ed’s neck rise. Al suddenly presses closer, his shoulder bumping against Ed’s. It trembles.

Ed holds his breath until the footsteps come to a stop. A heartbeat passes. Another. He squeezes Al’s hand again, then slowly rises up to glance over the lip of the counter again.

Instead of a jungle-man, though, he’s only met with empty space. The breath catches in Ed’s throat, apprehension pricking at his nerves more than relief can. People don’t just vanish into thin air.

_Where did he...?_

Al lets out a strangled squeak that sounds deceptively like a scream trapped in his throat. A protective urge tears through Ed as he looks over his shoulder—

Lowered to his knees before the counter and peering around it, the jungle-man’s face is just as filth-cakes as the rest of him. Bushy facial hair bursts out from beneath his nose, compounding upon the already tangled mane that spills past his shoulders to almost completely eclipse his human features. He pins them with eyes darker than midnight, brimming with something wild and almost hungry—and for the second time today, Ed sees his painfully short life flash lightning-quick before his eyes.

The jungle-man leans forward. Blinks. Ed wraps an arm protectively around Al’s shoulders and swallows a scream.

“Which one of you rolled a five or an eight?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember when I said I was descending into crossover hell, like, three weeks ago?
> 
> Well, GUESS WHO MEANT IT.
> 
> That's right! I didn't just post some random thing on the internet and plan to leave it there, collecting dust for years! I am following through on this hellish idea that's probably going to get me damned!
> 
> I kid, but actually, I had so much fun writing this and fucking love how it came out.
> 
> So, just a note, I did do a little switching around of the turns and their result. In the movie, the mosquitoes come before the monkeys, but I wanted to apply pressure earlier on. This will be the only time I'll do this, but I just wanted to let you all know, in case any die-hard fans decide to call bullshit.
> 
> Speaking of fans, thanks everyone who has actually approved of this idea and called it genius like goddamn, I don't deserve you. You're all so sweet. Hope you enjoyed.
> 
> Sincerely,  
> The Immortal Moon


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